First-year student at Anna University commits suicide

Left a note saying she could not cope with college studies

A 19-year-old student of Anna University committed suicide by hanging herself inside a hostel, on campus on Tuesday morning. Police said she left a suicide note stating that she decided to take the extreme step as she was not able to cope with her college education.

S. Dhyriya Lakshmi, a native of K.V. Palayam in Villupuram district, was a first-year student of Civil Engineering in College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG). She was a resident of a hostel at the Kondrai Block on campus, where she was staying with five students in a room.

She attended two hours of class on Tuesday morning and came to the hostel room around 10.30 a.m. When her roommate Saratha Priyadharshini, came to the room around 11 a.m., she found it locked from the inside. Saratha then went to the back door and opened it to find Lakshmi hanging from in the room with a nylon

dupatta .

Kottupuram police said the girl had climbed atop a bunk bed in the room and hung from a wooden beam on the ceiling by standing on a plastic chair. A case of unnatural death has been registered and an investigation is underway. The girl's father Sakthivel, is expected to arrive in the city on Wednesday morning.

Speaking to The Hindu over the phone, Sakthivel, who is a farmer, said that Dhyriya Lakshmi was his eldest daughter and had scored 92 per cent in the class XII exams. “I took a bank loan and put her in college after a lot of struggle,” he added.

Her classmates noted that she had attended a class in the morning, “But she kept saying that she was finding studies increasingly difficult,” said one of her friends. One of the hostel wardens said she had been very depressed after S. Manivannan, a third-year engineering student committed suicide a few weeks ago. “She had not been attending classes since then. She was also specially counselled after his death because he was her good friend,” said one of her friends. Friends said she was part of ‘Siruthuli', an initiative that Manivannan and his friends had launched to help poor students fund their education.

Dhyriya Lakshmi had had a 7.85 CGPA in her first semester exams and an attendance of over 93 per cent. But she found it very difficult to pass her internal assessment exams in the second semester, especially because she came from a Tamil medium school, her friends said. “Of the two internal assessment rounds, she did not appear for one and had poor results in the other. The thought that she had lost a year was bothering her very much,” one of them said.

CEG will soon conduct an enquiry, said M. Sekar, dean of the college. He said that most students scored very well in the first semester because the subjects were the same as those in school. “But in the second semester, with a curriculum of engineering subjects, they face difficulties.We have been having professional counsellors talk to our students twice every week,” he added.