A 16-year-old student preparing for the JEE allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in his hostel room shortly after the National Testing Agency released the answer key for the first edition of JEE-Main 2024. This marks the third suspected suicide case among coaching students in Kota this year, according to an police official.
The body of Shubh Choudhary, a grade 12 student from Chhattisgarh who had appeared in the JEE-Main 2024 examination, was discovered hanging from the ceiling fan in his hostel room in the Jawahar Nagar area on Tuesday morning, according to circle officer DSP Bhawani Singh.
Choudhary, who had been preparing for JEE at a local coaching institute for two years, had been residing in the Jawahar Nagar hostel during this time. The police, however, have not yet confirmed the status of his examination results. Following Choudhary’s failure to respond to his parents’ calls on Tuesday morning, they requested the hostel warden to check on him. Upon entering his room, the warden discovered Choudhary’s body and notified the authorities.
According to the CO, the incident is believed to have occurred sometime on Monday night, although no suicide note was found. The actual cause of the suspected suicide has yet to be determined. It was noted that the fan in Choudhary’s hostel room did not have an anti-suicide device, which is a violation of safety norms. The body has been transferred to a mortuary, and a post-mortem will be conducted upon the arrival of his parents from Chhattisgarh.
This incident adds to the string of suspected suicides among coaching students in Kota since January, with 26 reported cases in 2023, the highest in a decade. Kota attracts around 2.5 lakh students annually from across the country for engineering and medical entrance exam preparations.
With inputs from PTI.