Nishank Rathore, a third-year college student, was found dead on the railway tracks near Obaidullaganj town in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh on 24th July 2022. Before his death, his father had received a message that read, “Gustakh-e-Nabi ki ek saza, sar tan sey judaa.”

Uma Shankar Rathore, the father of the victim Nishank Rathore, received the message at 5.44 pm on Sunday evening. The message read, “Gustakh-e-Nabi ki ek saza, sar tan sey judaa”. After reading the message, Uma Shankar tried to trace his son, 20 years old Nishant Rathore, a third-year student at Oriental College in Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.

However, Nishank was missing from his hostel room, and later, his dead body was recovered from the railway tracks in Obaidullaganj in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh.

Speaking to India Today TV, IG Suri said, “We have traced his movements through CCTV cameras right from the time he left his room in Bhopal. At 5.09 pm he was spotted at a petrol pump and he was not accompanied by anyone. The post-mortem has revealed that he died because of coming before a moving train.”

A report in Hindustan Times now says that the SIT formed to probe his death has concluded that the death of Nishank was a suicide by the youth. Quoting an unnamed SIT official, Hindustan Times reports that the official claimed Nishank committed suicide because he was in debt. A day before his murder, the report says, he had taken Rs 50,000 from his sister to pay his college fees, however, did not make that payment. Further, the report claims that he had taken odd loans from online instant loan apps and was afraid that he would not be able to repay the loans.

The reasoning provided by SIT, however, raises doubts about the authenticity of this theory.

He might have written the message mentioning “affront to Prophet” to win the support of Hindu nationalists by portraying himself as a martyr or to get the government’s help for his family, the official added, according to the Hindustan Times report. “The line ‘Nabi ki shan me gustakh maf nahi’ had been doing rounds after the killing of a tailor in Udaipur for backing Nupur Sharma,” he added. “No one knows what was weighing on his mind. We are all only making guesses,” the official said.

There are several questions that arise from the purported statement of the anonymous SIT official. Firstly, the official himself is saying that they are only ‘guessing’ why Nishank committed suicide. From the report itself, it is unclear on what evidence did the SIT base their conclusion on, when they are admitting themselves that they are only guessing why he may have committed suicide.

Nishank was only 20 years old and it makes little sense that he would have sent those messages from his own phone to his father before committing suicide. Essentially, the SIT would be saying that Nishank harboured so much animosity towards the Muslim community, that even before committing suicide, he was thinking of implicating Muslims in his death. Furthermore, the SIT, according to HT, has theorised that he may have done this to win the favour of “nationalists”. One wonders what good would that adulation be after Nishank would be dead.

OpIndia reached out to some experts to try and understand if this theory of the SIT could hold water.

“It will not be appropriate for me to comment on an ongoing investigation, especially when I have not seen the case files, but the case appears complex,” a serving police officer spoke on conditions of anonymity. “I have myself come across cases of teen suicides but I have never seen a teen leaving such rather irrelevant messages (the WhatsApp messages and Instagram status) before killing themselves. Even otherwise a person is expected to leave a suicide note or a message for his near and dear ones before killing oneself, not cryptic messages that appear like a conspiracy to malign a religious group.”

“It is very difficult for me to imagine a teenager whose mind is so twisted that he kills himself to fix the Muslim community,” the officer explained why he was finding it difficult to take media reports at face value, “Such a person will have some past history. Some cybercrime related to hate crimes, or something like that. I don’t think this kid has any such history.”

“Teenagers don’t just kill themselves like that,” he repeated.

Speaking to OpIndia, a psychologist also raised doubts about the theory reported by Hindustan Times. “Look, teenagers are complex. They often have deep-seated fears and anger that seem incomprehensible to adults. So I can’t say 100% that this theory does not make sense. It is possible. However, I do find it hard to believe that a young man would commit suicide and before he does, create such a complex ruse. If he was scared of loan repayment, he would ideally apologise to his family. If he was angry, he would express that anger – something”, she said.

“Teenagers want to win the adulation of groups (since the SIT said he might have wanted the favour of nationalists) while they are alive. Most of them revel in that kind of attention. It would make very little sense for him to hanker for that attention knowing that he would be dead”, she added.

Another doctor, however, theorised that the suicide theory could hold some merit. “You don’t see Islamists pushing someone in front of a train. Their aim to commit this murder, if it was one, was to make an example out of him. Why would they innocuously push him in front of a train?” asked the doctor.

“Further, to make any conclusive opinion on the case, one would have to see the autopsy report. Were there any injuries on the boy besides what the train did to him? Was there a struggle? Any injuries that seemed were made ante mortem?”, he asked.

The Hindustan Times report itself seemed like it was reporting the hurried opinion of one member of the SIT, instead of the conclusion reached by the team itself. The report itself did not explain the messages sent from Nishank’s phone and the Instagram post barring speculation about why he may have done it himself.

It would also seem that the investigating agencies are functioning under the same assumptions that they may use while investigating Muslims. Islamists often don’t mind dying themselves to implicate Hindus. The concept of “Jannat” in the afterlife is a very real concept to radicalised Muslims. Therefore, for them, there is a reward attached to implicating the “Kafirs” even while dying. One such example is that of Kasab. Kasab had worn a Kalawa on his wrist so if he dies in the terror attack that he was perpetrating, people would believe that he was a Hindu and not an Islamist.

For Hindus, even if one believes they are sectarian, their tryst against the Muslim community is far more political than theological. Theologically, there is no concept of the afterlife that would compel Hindus to extract a pound of flesh from the Muslim community even while committing suicide. Therefore, everything we know about the patterns of both communities makes it difficult to believe the theory being furthered by the SIT.

Give the several murders that have been committed by Islamists after issuing “sar tan se juda” threat, the SIT would need to come up with a little more than merely speculation to explain the death of Nishank Rathore.