Another IIT Aspirant Commits Suicide In Kota, Ninth Case This Year

Kota: An engineering student of a coaching institute in Kota committed suicide on Monday night. The student committed suicide by hanging himself from a ceiling fan in his rented room in Mahaveer Nagar area, the ninth such incident in the coaching hub in 2016.

The body was sent to a hospital for postmortem on Tuesday morning, police said, adding no suicide note was found in the room. A probe has been launched in the matter to ascertain why he took the extreme step.

Another student had in April ended her life despite having cracked the IIT-JEE mains. The girl had in a suicide note said she was not able to put up with the depression and stress that she had been experiencing while taking coaching and that the government should down coaching institutes.

In the wake of increasing cases of suicides by students, Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh had recently said a body formed to regulate coaching institutes. “The body should also decide the admission procedure to these institutes and direct them to reduce the pressure on students,” he had said.

The small desert town of Kota, nearly 250 km from Jaipur, accommodates a range of coaching institutes to prep students for the IIT and medical entrance exams. Nearly 11 lakh students sit for the IIT entrance every year. Of these, two lakh qualify the mains and only 10,000 are eventually accepted by the IITs.
After another student ended her life despite having cracked the IIT-JEE mains last month, a senior administration official, Collector Ravi Kumar Surpur, had sent a letter to the parents of the 1.5 lakh students enrolled for coaching in Kota, urging them “not to force their expectations and dreams on their children”. Seventeen students taking coaching committed suicide in Kota last year, after which guidelines to coaching institutes to check such deaths were initiated.