IIT-Hyderabad Student Dies By Suicide, Family Says Was Upset Over Backlogs

A 20-year-old student of IIT-Hyderabad died by suicide last week in Vishakhapatnam by drowning himself in the sea. The student, identified as Dhanavath Kartik, was allegedly struggling due to some backlogs in college because of which he took the extreme step, suspect the police.

Dhanavath Kartik, whose parents reside in Miryalguda town of Telangana, was reportedly missing from his IIT college hostel campus in Hyderabad from July 17. The hostel authorities filed a missing complaint on July 19 after his parents came looking for him after he did not answer his phone.

According to Kartik's uncle Ravindra, he would speak to his mother twice every day and had spoken to her even on the evening before the incident. However, when he did not answer his phone in the morning on July 19, his mother got worried.

The police said that Kartik made his last call to his mother from somewhere near Jodugullapalem Beach in Visakhapatnam but even then made her believe he was on the campus. According to CCTV footages, he was last seen in what was described as a danger zone near the beach in the early hours of July 19.

The police recovered a body on the beach on July 20 but suspected that it was of an old man because of the decomposition. However, after post-mortem, doctors said that the victim was a younger person.

Kartik's parents were called in and they identified the body as his.

The family says that Kartik was worried about some backlogs in college. According to Kartik's family, he stayed back at the hostel even during the holiday break in May and June, when everyone else, including his friends had left the hostel for their homes.

Kartik had come home only for a couple of weeks in May and returned for his parents marriage anniversary, and again for a couple of days the weekend before he went missing. His family did not suspect anything seriously wrong. They thought he was looking low-spirited and not in the best of health because of the pressure of the backlogs, his mother said.