Second suicide at IIT hostel in fortnight
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Kharagpur, March 30: An IIT Kharagpur student hailing from Rajasthan was today found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room and a note found on his bed said: “Mother, forgive me.”
Police said Lokesh Kumar Goyel, 22, a fourth-year chemical engineering student, apparently committed suicide because he was suffering from “some kind of depression”.
The alleged suicide comes days after another IIT student from Andhra Pradesh hanged himself to death on March 17, upset with not getting the job of his choice.
It could not be immediately confirmed if Lokesh, who was described by IIT authorities as a good student and a jovial person, was unhappy with any job interview.
A police officer said: “We found a three-line note lying on the bed addressed to his mother. The note said: ‘Mother forgive me for what I have done in four years’. However, the lines were scratched out with a pencil. We suspect the student was suffering from some kind of depression. We are waiting for the post-mortem report.”
IIT registrar Tapan Kumar Ghosal said the news of Lokesh’s death came as a “shock” to him. “It was a shock. He was a good student and performed well in his semesters. He was a jovial person, too. Yesterday, he had dinner with his friends in the hostel. We are surprised at the turn of events. We have informed the student’s family at Khanna in Karauli district of Rajasthan,” Ghosal said.
He added that Lokesh was preparing for an internship in Mumbai.
The body of Lokesh was today found by his friends who had come to call him for dinner. Doctors said the 22-year-old had died at least six to seven hours before being brought to the hospital.
“It was around 7.20pm and we were going for dinner. I went to call him but found the door of his room bolted from inside. When he did not respond to repeated knocking, I called some other inmates of the hostel and broke the door. We found him hanging from the ceiling fan. We informed the authorities and called an ambulance.”
A police officer said preliminary examination had revealed that Lokesh had tried to cut the veins of his left wrist and left leg but was unsuccessful.
The police said a team arrived from the station just outside the IIT campus within five minutes of being informed and brought down the body.
“When we took the student to B.C. Roy Hospital on the campus, doctors declared him dead on arrival,” a police officer said.
Today’s was the second alleged suicide at IIT Kharagpur in a month. On March 17, Boga Shravan, a student from Andhra Pradesh pursuing MTech in computer science, committed suicide as the job he got in a university offered a much lower salary than what he had aimed for.
On March 11, Shoaib Ahmed, an IIT Guwahati student hailing from North 24-Parganas, was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room. IIT Guwahati director Gautam Biswas had said Shoaib’s friends had told the authorities that the student had been suffering from depression. His family had contested the claim.
