JEE aspirant found dead in 4th 'suicide' incident in Kota this yr

Four days before the exam, a 17-year-old student in Rajasthan's Kota who was also preparing for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to an undergraduate engineering course died by suicide on Friday night, said police officials concerned to the matter.

- Senjuti Sengupta

JAIPUR:

The development also came only a day after the death of an 18-year-old National Entrance Eligibility Test (NEET) aspirant from Odisha by suicide on Thursday who had been studying in a reputed coaching centre in Kota for the last two years, said police.

The latest is the fourth such case of a coaching student preparing for JEE or NEET died by suicide in the district in only the first month this year. Last year, at least 20 students died by suicide in Kota, down from 27 a year ago.

According to the station house officer of Kota's Jawahar Nagar police station, Ram Laxman Gurjar, "The latest student, a native of Rajasthan's Bundi, had been staying at his grandmother's place in Kota along with one of his elder cousins for the last three years. He had earlier studied in a reputed coaching centre in the district for two years but quit the institute last year when he failed to crack the exam. Currently he was all set to take the JEE test again on January 22."

The SHO said that the student's parents work in Bundi at their hometown. "The victim was also a student of Class XII in a local school in the Kota City and had been preparing for the JEE along with his final board exam," Gurjar said.

"Late on Friday night, he hung himself from the window latch of his room when everybody was sleeping. When he did not respond to his parents' phone-calls on Saturday morning, his grandmother and cousin went to check on him and found him dead at his room," the officer said, adding that no suicide note was yet recovered from his place.