Krishnagar, June 25: Two 12-year-old girls from Nadia committed suicide early this morning after being scolded by their mothers for failing their exams.

Mousumi Sammadar, a resident of Gobindapur village in Shantipur, and Kanika Biswas from Hanskhali had not been promoted to Class VI this year.

Mousumi’s father, Ashu, an affluent fruit trader, had taken her to her uncle’s house in Shantipur town. Ashu left the next day, but Mousumi stayed on.

When Mousumi returned home last evening, her mother, Sikha, gave her a sound thrashing for staying away for so many days and ignoring her studies, police said.

What added insult to injury was that Mousumi’s younger brothers, Abhijit and Surojit, who are in Class IV and Class II, were watching while her mother rebuked her, said the officer in charge of Shantipur police station, Anupam Chakraborty.

A sobbing Mousumi rushed to her room and locked herself in. “Early this morning, before anyone woke up, she hanged herself from the ceiling fan with her dupatta tied around her neck,” an officer said.

At Bhaina village in Hanskhali, about 80km from Calcutta, Kanika had stopped going to school after she failed to get a promotion to Class VI in March. She would help her father, Anil, a bidi trader.

“Yesterday, Kanika wanted to join her two sisters who were going to a musical soiree in nearby Bagula. But they refused to take her along and teased her about failing her exams,” the officer in charge of Hanskhali police station, Sujit Bhattacharjee, said.

“Kanika’s mother Malati took her sisters’ side and scolded her,” an officer said.

Kanika gulped down half a bottle of pesticide early this morning.