Girl kills herself after cracking IIT-JEE, didn’t want to be an engineer

Mangalore Today News Network

Kota, Apr 28, 2016: A 17-year-old girl in Rajasthan cracked the IIT-JEE but committed suicide a day later on Thursday as she did not want to pursue a career in engineering, police said.

The girl, identified as Kriti Tripathi, jumped off a five-storey building in Kota, leaving a five-page note citing the reasons for ending her life, said Kota superintendent of police SS Godara. She was declared brought dead at a local hospital.

Hailing from Ghaziabad, she was staying with her parents in Kota where she was a student in one of the several coaching institutes in the city, around 250km from capital Jaipur.

This is the fifth suicide by a student this year in Kota, famous for its coaching institutes that train candidates for different entrance exams including the joint entrance exams (mains), considered among the toughest in the country. Students who clear the mains qualify for the advanced exams that secure them a place in the IITs.

Experts say that most of the suicides are due to fear of failure and the burden of expectations from family.

Around 35,000 students from different institutes of Kota have cleared the IIT-JEE this year.

“Prima facie, the cause of suicide seems like depression and disinterest in engineering studies. In her suicide note she mentioned that her mother had admitted her in the science stream but she found no interest in subjects like Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry,” the SP said.

He added that the girl scored 144 marks in the exam which is around 44 more than the cut-off of 100 marks for general category candidates.

Her father was out when she jumped off the building. Her mother is away in Ghaziabad for the past few months, said Awadesh Kumar, assistant sub-inspector at the Jawahar Nagar police station.

Every year, more than 1.5 lakh student from across the country enroll in the 40-odd coaching institutes to prepare for the highly-competitive entrance examinations for different professional courses.

At least 56 students studying in different institutes in the city have committed suicide in the last five years, most of them attributed to the fear of failure.

Recently, several coaching institutes jointly launched a round-the-clock helpline to offer counselling, track callers suffering from depression and provide assistance.

The district administration also asked all coaching institutes to conduct a screening test for students seeking admission to coaching institutes and to give parents an assessment of their wards’ chances of cracking the entrance exams.