Kevon Felmine

In the fi­nal en­try in her di­ary, 15-year-old Re­hana Nand­lal wrote that she and her 42-year-old lover would do what they had to do and then end their lives. The Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary stu­dent car­ried out her side of the pact on Tues­day. She was found with a bot­tle of weed­i­cide at her side on the stair­way of a church near her home on Mon­day.Re­hana was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. The trou­bled teen, who lost both par­ents to ill­ness­es sev­er­al year ago, ran away from her home on Mon­day.

A neigh­bour found her at the EPI Pen­te­costal Church a short dis­tance from her home at Has­sanali Trace, Bar­rack­pore. Re­call­ing her younger sis­ter's trag­ic last mo­ments, Tara Nand­lal, when po­lice vis­it­ed their home on Mon­day, said she was told of Re­hana's in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with an em­ploy­ee at her school. She said she heard the re­la­tion­ship had caught the at­ten­tion of the school's prin­ci­pal who de­cid­ed to in­ves­ti­gate but nev­er told her about her sis­ter's af­fair with a much old­er man. She added: "Had I known be­fore, I would have dealt with it. It was strange be­cause she would al­ways come home on time and she nev­er went any­where with­out us.

"She al­ways got good grades in school and I would al­ways get good re­ports about her," said Tara, who had been her sis­ter's guardian for the last 18 months. She said she ques­tioned Re­hana about her in­volve­ment with the man but the girl de­nied all claims. Tara said: "I went in­to her wardrobe and I saw a di­ary. "I saw that she wrote where the man would take her out and what they would do to­geth­er and how they would have sex. One of the places I saw was at a house in Ma­yaro. I was in shock." She said the first en­try of the di­ary was dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2010 and the last was two weeks ago.

Tara claimed the man took ad­van­tage of her sis­ter as in the di­ary there were en­tries where she had con­fid­ed in him about her par­ents' deaths. Man­ag­er of Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Ra­jen­dranath Ma­haraj, vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day and told them the min­istry was deal­ing with the mat­ter.