A 15-year-old girl recently lost her life to an alleged stunt of Astral Travelling in Bhoiwada, Parel east. The girl's family claims that she had been surfing videos of Astral Travelling, and an attempt at performing the same may have resulted in her death. She succumbed to her injuries three days after the incident in the hospital.
The deceased, Shravanani Gholap stayed with her parents and grandmother at Naigaon in Bhoiwada. According to the police, on January 10, Shravanani's grandmother had found her surfing through the mobile phone and had told her not spend so much time over the same. Gholap was later found hanging in the bathroom by her scarf. The family rushed her to KEM Hospital.
However, one of Shravanani's relatives has a different version of the incident. "Shravanani used to spend hours on the phone recording videos of herself. She was also surfing videos on Astral Travelling. On January 10, she was lying on the bed in a state of meditation, when her grandmother woke her up. This angered Shravanani who said her practice of Astral Travelling was interrupted. Shravanani also told her that her soul was about to come out of her body and on returning she would have shared her experience on what all places her soul had visited," her uncle Arun Gholap said.
He said that Shravanani then went to the bathroom and was later found hanging.
"Since she was performing the act before heading to the bathroom, we suspect that she went to the bathroom to perform the same act, which went wrong and as a result she lost her life. The government should do something to ban such videos that can harm people's lives. We have lost our child but nobody else should suffer the same pain," Arun Gholap said.
"The police had examined Shravanani's phone, the video history of which revealed that she had downloaded the videos of Astral Travelling and some screenshots were saved in the phone to that effect," Gholap family friend Ramesh Jagtap said.
"The family claims that Gholap was surfing the videos but what led to her suicide needs to be probed. We have registered a case of accidental death in the matter as of now," senior police inspector, Bhoiwada police station, Ramchandra Jadhav said.
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On January 10, Shravani's grandmother had found her surfing through the mobile phone and had told her not spend so much time over the same. Gholap was later found hanging in the bathroom.