CHITWAN, March 20: Three individuals, including the principal, who were arrested in the case of Shalin Pokhrel, who was found dead in the hostel of Ekta Shishu Niketan in Ratnagar, have been released on bail.

The Chitwan District Court has granted bail to the accused, ordering their release upon payment of Rs 500,000 each. The decision comes following proceedings related to the case of incitement to suicide, as registered by the District Attorney General's Office in Chitwan. The bail hearings were conducted on Monday and Tuesday.

Following the incident, Principal of Ekta Shishu Niketan, Balhari Devkota, vice principal Kiran Bahadur Adhikari, and hostel warden Kamal Prasad Sharma were taken into custody.

Shalin's family had initially filed a complaint of rape and murder with the police on February 24, after the student was found hanging in a ceiling fan. The arrests were made based on this complaint.

However, investigations and the postmortem report revealed that the cause of death was suicide, not murder. Consequently, the family amended the complaint, registering a case of abetment to suicide.