A 20-year-old student from West Bengal, preparing for the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for medical colleges, was found dead in his rented room in Waqf Nagar area in Rajasthan’s Kota on Monday night. This is the 25th case of suicide by a student of a coaching institute in Kota this year.
The deceased, identified as Faureed Hussain, a native of West Bengal’s Birbhum district, was preparing for NEET at a coaching institute in Kota for the last one year. Police said no note had been recovered from the room and the boy’s family members in Birhum had been informed.
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Hussain was staying in the rented accommodation with some other students since July this year. His friends raised an alarm when he did not step out of his room till 8 p.m. and did not answer to their calls. Police rushed to the spot, when the landlord informed them, and broke the door open to find the youth hanging.
Hussain was taken to a hospital, where the doctors declared him brought dead. Police said the reason behind the extreme step was yet to be ascertained and the post-mortem would be conducted after the arrival of Hussain’s parents.
The suicides in Kota, considered the country’s coaching hub, have generated concern among the parents of the medical and engineering college aspirants and sparked a debate on stress and mental health among the students. The State government issued comprehensive guidelines for regulating coaching institutes in September this year, after half-a-dozen students died by suicide in August.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot earlier held a dialogue with Kota‘s coaching centre operators and discussed with them the issues of pressure of studies and providing psychological support to students, parents’ expectations, career counselling, drug consumption by students and the development of sports facilities near the coaching institutes.
Guidelines were laid down that there would be “no glorification” of toppers and no segregation of students based on their ranks. A recommendation was also made that the students below class IX should not be admitted to the coaching centres, test results should be kept confidential and the students’ batches be formed alphabetically instead of their ranks.
