New Delhi: Three students in Rajasthan’s coaching hub Kota have died by suicide, the local police confirmed Monday, allegedly from the pressure of lagging in their preparations for entrance exams.
The police said Ankush Anand and Ujjawal Kumar from Bihar killed themselves in their paying guest accommodation while the third victim, Pranav Verma from Madhya Pradesh, died in another.
All three were enrolled in the Allen Career Institute in Kota, the police said. Anand and Verma were preparing for the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for medical studies while Kumar was studying for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for engineering.
Superintendent of Police (SP), Kota, Kesar Singh Shekhawat told ThePrint that cops were yet to ascertain the cause of death. “Their bodies have been sent for post-mortem and we are awaiting the report,” Singh said.
While the police are probing the reason behind the suicides, sources said the three were under tremendous stress from missing classes. They were also behind their peers in completing the syllabus, the sources added.
According to reports, student suicides in Kota have been on the rise after the Covid pandemic. Four students committed suicide in May this year.
While the local police did not provide an exact number of student suicides, they did confirm that numbers have gone up in recent times. “The number of students coming to Kota has risen post pandemic. Earlier 1.5 lakh students came to Kota, but nearly 2.5 lakh students have come this year. Proportionate to that number, we are also seeing the numbers of suicides going up,” Shekhawat said.
Every year, lakhs of students come to study in Rajasthan’s Kota with the dream of cracking the medical or engineering entrance exam.
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