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A 20-year-old student studying in Kota to crack the Joint Entrance Exam, or the engineering entrance test, died by suicide in his room on Wednesday. His death follows the suicide case of another JEE aspirant, a 19-year-old who was found hanging in his hostel room the previous evening.
Abhishek Lodha, 20, left a note stating that he felt he would not be able to clear the JEE, which is mandatory to get into the country's top engineering colleges. "I'm unable to study. I am preparing for the JEE exams, but it's beyond me. Sorry," the note read.
Lodha, who was from Guna in Madhya Pradesh, had moved to Kota last May to prepare for JEE.
He was good in studies and had himself insisted on coming to Kota for coaching, said his elder brother Ajay. His uncle, who came to Kota to collect his body, said they spoke to him every day but he never expressed any stress about studies.
"He always said everything was good and going well. 'I am busy with preparations' is what he told us. The last time we spoke to him was the evening before the incident," said his uncle.
The police, too, suggest it appears to be a case of exam stress.
"It appears to be stress. We will write to the administration to take action against the PG accommodation as the room where the student died did not have an anti-hanging device in the fan," said Mukesh Meena, Vigyan Nagar police station in-charge.
The evening before, Neeraj from Haryana's Mahendragarh was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his hostel room. This despite an anti-hanging device installed in the fan.
His father Babloo Prajapat said he had spoken to his son earlier in the afternoon and that Neeraj was planning to come home by the evening train. His younger son is also in Kota preparing for the NEET, or the medical entrance exam.
Calling for a fair investigation into the case, Mr Prajapat has questioned how his son died by hanging despite an anti-hanging device installed in the fan.
Rajasthan's Kota, the coaching capital of the country, welcomes students from different states to prepare for competitive entrance exams. The downside, however, is a rise in suicide cases among students that poses a challenge to the counsellors as well as district administration.
Last year, the number of suicides in Kota had come down by 38% to 17 as compared to 24 in 2023.