From the email he sent to a professor, it appears that Jawaharlal Nehru University student who was found dead inside the varsity’s library on Sunday, wanted to have an outer-body experience.
The document accessed by The Hindu read: “Ever to the surface, in the past few months, has the need in me to venture beyond the body, to investigate into the physical death, been provoked.”
In the two-paragraph note, the student said he would not be able to prevent the email from reaching the professor as he would have taken the extreme step by then. “Whether I am dead in whatever sense, mentally or physically incapacitated, paralysed, captured or not,” he wrote.
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Clinical psychologist Rajat Mitra said that for many who think on the same lines, it is natural.
Similar conversations
“His words suggest that he may have been looking for an outer-body experience, though it is not conclusive. It can only be confirmed after it is checked whether he had similar conversations with someone, or read books, or surfed websites on the subject,” Dr. Mitra said.
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Sources said his parents, both doctors, examined his body before the post-mortem. They had no clue that he was upset. His friends, however, said he had become reclusive in the last few weeks.
In the email, he had also asked the professor to help his family bear with the loss. He also mentioned two friends.
“I pray for the peace of all living and abiding things,” he wrote.
Dr. Mitra said, “It appears that he had been thinking on these lines for a long time. I don’t see any feelings of rancour or helplessness or despair here. It looks like he has made a decision to go and he is comfortable with that it,” he said.
After the post-mortem at Safdarjung Hospital on Saturday, the body was handed over to the family. His school friends from Tamil Nadu recalled him as a brilliant student.
Suicide prevention helpline: Sanjivni, Society for Mental Health,
Telephone: 011-4076 9002, Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. -7.30 p.m.