IIT-Madras student hangs himself
TNN Nov 4, 2013, 03.49AM IST
CHENNAI: A first-year student of chemical engineering committed suicide in his hostel room at Indian Institute of Technology-Madras on Friday night.
The 18-year-old student, Akshay Kumar Meena, from Kota in Rajasthan, was found hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his room in Pampa Hostel, IIT officials said. They said it was not immediately clear what provoked Meena to commit suicide as he did not leave behind a suicide note.
This is the third suicide of a student in an IIT Madras hostel in the past two years.
Meena joined the institution in July 2013. His friends and hostel-mates said they did not notice anything out of the usual in Meena's behaviour and they could not think of any reason why he would kill himself.
"He was very active in student groups and participated in events in the hostels," a friend said, requesting that his name not be revealed. "He was not bad at studies."
Meena made a call to his father at 8.30pm. "His father said there was nothing unusual about the call and his son did not indicate that he had any problem," an IIT-M official said.
Meena's friends found him hanging in his room when they returned to the hostel at 10.15pm, after Friday's weekly movie screening at the institute.
"His room was locked from inside. When he did not open the door even though we knocked on it for several minutes, we stood on a stool and peeped through the ventilator of his room," Meena's friend said. "We were shocked to see a rope tied to the ceiling fan."
He said the immediately informed security officers and the medical department in the campus. "But he was dead by the time they forced open the door," the friend said.
Meena was supposed to see the movie with his friends but he left the venue at 8.30pm, even before the film was screened. "His last Facebook post, along with his picture, said, 'I am alone, but I am happy'," another friend said.
"Police are still investigating the case," IIT-M dean of students L S Ganesh said. "We are shocked," he said. "He joined the institution barely three months ago. His friends did not observe any change in him and he was a fairly good student."
Police sent the body Royapettah Government Hospital for postmortem. Meena's father, Nanda Kishore, arrived in Chennai on Saturday. He will take the body back to Kota on Monday morning.
