Another student suicide in Kota, 3rd in 11 days and 19th this year | India News

KOTA: Yet another teenager, preparing for IIT-JEE in Kota for the past one year, died by suicide just hours after his father left for home after spending five days with him.

Manish Prajapat (17), a class 12 student from Azamgarh in UP, hanged himself with a bedsheet from the ceiling fan in his hostel room in the city’s Mahaveer Nagar area on Thursday night. This is the third suicide by a coaching student in Kota this month and the 19th this year.
Manish had dinner at the hostel and returned to his room around 7pm. His father, who was headed home by train, called him up several times. When the teen did not respond, his father asked the hostel caretaker to check on him. On peeping through the window, the caretaker found him hanging.

No suicide note was recovered from Manish’s room, circle inspector at Jawahar Nagar police station, Shivraj Singh, told TOI on Friday. Police suspect stress might have prompted the boy to take his life, as he was reportedly weak in studies and was scoring low marks in routine tests at the institute. He was also irregular to the coaching classes.
Earlier this month, Manjot Chabra (17), a NEET aspirant from Rampur in UP, and Bhargav Mishra (17), an IIT-JEE aspirant from West Champaran in Bihar, had died by suicide last week. Manjot’s parents, however, had alleged murder.
Despite the spate of suicides in Kota, a coaching hub for medical and engineering aspirants, the Rajasthan government has been mum over the Coaching Institute (Regulation and Control) Bill, raising questions about its intention to prevent such incidents. The bill, drafted by a three-member committee, was uploaded on the portal of the higher education department this year, but was not tabled in the assembly. “The reasons are obvious: strict provisions that were objected to by the multimillion-dollar coaching industry. Even the public representatives from Kota were averse to the idea of regulation,” said a source.