Toronto: When Durba Mukherjee first came to Canada from Chennai with her young son in 2018, she expected a safe, inclusive community in which her pre-teen son would thrive. But after the death of her 12-year-old son by suicide in June 2019, she has been running from pillar to post to get some answers from the authorities.
In March 2018, Mukherjee had immigrated to Toronto after her divorce. The move was meant to give her son, Arka Chakraborty a better environment. With a background in computer science and engineering, Mukherjee quickly found work at the Royal Bank of Canada and settled down in northern Toronto.
Arka joined a local school, excelling in academics in the local elementary school. Mukherjee remembers him as a bright, lively boy. But after moving on to a new middle school in September 2018, Arka began experiencing problems with his classmates, a matter which his mother described as bullying.
On June 21, 2019, Mukherjee awoke from a nap to read a note written by her son, where he expressed anguish over his perceived failures as a son.
“It said, ‘I have been a disappointment to you. I have not been very popular at school’,” Mukherjee recalled. “I panicked and immediately called 911. I thought, ‘My son will be alive’.”
But it was too late — her son had fallen to his death, his body lying in the shrubbery of a nearby apartment complex. Footage from the CCTV camera on the rooftop deck showed her son falling off the building.
Search for answers
Following his death, Mukherjee began to search for answers with regards to why her son had died. She began the long battle to receive access to the police report investigating her son’s death, the circumstances surrounding her son’s bullying by his classmates and Arka’s overall emotional state in the days leading up to his death.
The police investigation into Arka’s death concluded about a month after his passing, on July 25, 2019, but it was not made available to her. Mukherjee and her lawyer filed a Freedom of Information request with the Toronto Police Services (TPS) in order to review the content of their investigation. It wasn’t until August 2020, 14 months after her son’s death, when Mukherjee finally received the report. The police had deemed Arka’s death as a suicide, but Mukherjee took issue with this claim.
From the onset of the investigation, Mukherjee took issue with how TPS reviewed her son’s case. She found the police to be of little comfort to her, offering little insight as to what had happened to Arka.
Representative image of the Toronto Police Services. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Hillelfrei CC BY SA 4.0
“I asked [one of the officers] that, okay, if you think my son died by suicide, why do you think this happened… to my shock, she told me for a person to die by suicide, they did not need any reason,” Mukherjee reflected.
Mukherjee maintains that her son’s death is inextricably linked to the way he was treated by his school and classmates. The week leading up to Arka’s death, the father of a classmate accused him of stealing a Nintendo Switch from his child. Arka told his mother that one of his bullies had stolen the Nintendo Switch and given him the console as an olive branch, telling Arka that the device had been left by a previous tenant in the bully’s building.
After her son learned the console had actually been stolen, he returned the Nintendo Switch to its rightful owner. The day Arka died, Mukherjee was in the process of soothing the child’s father, who was unconvinced of her son’s innocence.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) maintains that there was no pattern of bullying occurring on school grounds with regards to Arka, thus making it impossible for their offices to investigate matters further.
“As we’ve previously indicated, the school investigated thoroughly both before and after Arka’s tragic passing,” said Ryan Bird, manager, TDSB (corporate & social media relations), in an email to this reporter. “Based on the information we had, staff at the school did not observe any bullying, nor were they made aware of any pattern of bullying. As such, no further review was conducted by the TDSB.”
Unconvinced with the school board’s decision
Mukherjee, however, remained unconvinced with the school board’s decision. She expected the police to look into the matter further, but after Arka’s death was ruled a suicide, the police concluded their own investigation. The mother refused to give up.
“My son’s death by suicide was abetted by the attitude of the school authorities,” she said. “He was accused of theft after he voluntarily returned the console to his friend. The school did not inform me of any accusation and interrogated my child, coerced him to get a confession to stealing and threatened him with a police case,” she alleged.
“This exercise was done keeping me in the dark. My son wanted to talk to me but he was not allowed to talk to his sole parent. The police ignored my statement and the investigation report has lots of factual inaccuracies that I have already reported to the police watchdog agency the Office of the Independent Police Review Director; they too ignored them all,” Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee decided to file a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review, arguing that the officer handling her son’s case had not been sufficiently thorough in the investigation. She alleged that she had never been interviewed by the police and that the police had not looked into the bullying her son endured.
The review, which took into consideration both Mukherjee’s account and that of the investigating officer, found that nothing criminal had occurred and thus her son’s death could not be investigated by the police any further.
“The position of the Complainant to want to know why her son took his own life at such a young age is completely understandable. The police, however, and by extension the Respondent Officer, are guided by the principles of law and applicable legislation. The Respondent Officer conducted a thorough and complete death investigation,” reads part of OIPRD’s report.
But Mukherjee maintained that there were issues within the report. For example, the police report mentions that Arka had addressed the suicide note to his mother as “Dear mom,” but Mukherjee maintains that her son would not address her as such; instead, he would use the Bengali term.
“My son never called me ‘mom’, he used to call me ‘maa‘,” Mukherjee noted. When police finally returned the notebook that had contained her son’s suicide note, Mukherjee noticed that the actual note had been removed from the binding.
In addition, the note was reported to have stated that her son admitted to stealing the console, but Mukherjee does not remember any such confession when she first read the note. But without the original, she is unable to confirm. She has yet to receive the original note from the police.
When contacted, the Toronto police offered no comment regarding the case.
Currently, Mukherjee is working with lawyers to continue investigations into her son’s death. For the past few months, on the recommendation of a child advocate familiar with her case, she and her lawyer pursued opening a public inquiry, to no avail. The local media has covered the story, but the authorities have not yet reacted.
“There is not much noise about my son’s death in local media. That makes me think we are victims of systemic racism here,” Mukherjee said.
On her part, Mukherjee is determined to get justice.
If you know someone – friend or family member – at risk of suicide, please reach out to them. The Suicide Prevention India Foundation maintains a list of telephone numbers (www.spif.in/seek-help/) they can call to speak in confidence. You could also refer them to the nearest hospital.
Sasha Dhesi is a freelance journalist and graduate student based in Toronto, Canada.