Manish Prajapati's body was found hanging from a fan in his hostel room.
Coaching hub Kota has seen the third student suicide in a week, with a 17-year-old preparing for IIT JEE allegedly hanging himself from a fan in his hostel room. Manish Prajapati's father was heading home to Uttar Pradesh after meeting his son when he got the news of his death.
This is the 19th student suicide in Kota, which is also known as 'Coaching City', this year. Lakhs of students from all over the country flock to the education hub every year to prepare for competitive exams and gain entry into India's top engineering and medical colleges.
Manish, who is from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, had come to Kota four months ago. Police said he was not doing very well in his studies and his father had arrived to meet him on Thursday. He had left Manish's hostel in Mahavir Nagar to return home last evening.
Manish's father had tried his phone around 8 pm and then called on the number for the hostel when he did not answer. The caretaker, Rakesh, said he went to Manish's room on the fifth floor and knocked on his door, but there was no reply. He then looked through the window and saw Manish hanging from the fan, using a bedsheet as a noose.
Rakesh informed the Jawahar Nagar police station. "We informed his father, who was on the way home to Azamgarh and is now coming back. The post-mortem of the dead body will be done after the family members arrive. It looks like a case of suicide, but no note has been found," said a police official.
On August 4, another 17-year-old preparing for the engineering exams had hanged himself in his hostel room in Kota. His was the second case of suspected suicide at the coaching hub in 48 hours.
Bhargav Mishra's body was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his paying guest accommodation. A resident of Champaran in Bihar, Bhargav had gone to Kota in March.
A day before that, a 17-year-old preparing for medical exams had allegedly committed suicide in the city by putting a plastic bag on his face. Manjot Chabra hailed from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. Manjot's parents, however, alleged that their son was murdered and filed a case against six people, including the owner of the hostel where he was staying.
Kota had seen 15 student suicides last year and nine in 2021.
BJP MP Sushil Modi had informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that over 10,000 students under the age of 18 had died by suicide in 2021 and 75 students from premier institutes like the IITs, IIMs and AIIMS had ended their lives in the past five years.
Stating that the high number of suicides reflect the severe mental and physical stress that students go through to secure admission in premier universities, Mr Modi had also pointed to parental pressure and urged the government to set up a comprehensive suicide prevention mechanism.