The year 2025 has come as a shoker to the coaching city of Kota as two more cases of student suicides have occurred on Wednesday. NEET UG aspirant from Gujarat and JEE aspirant from Assam have hanged self. With this, the suicide toll reached six in January itself.
The deceased students have been identified as Afsha Sheikh and Parag. Ashfa was living in Kota for the past five months and was preparing for the Medical Entrance Exam (NEET UG), while Parag was preparing for JEE Mains and was about to appear in the exam after four days.
Afsha was found dead when the mess keeper of the PG reached her room at around 10 in the morning. While, Parag’s mother had reached Kota from Assam on Wednesday itself but couldn’t meet her son.
This incident came to light after the student failed to respond to his mother.
The student was scheduled to appear for the JEE Main exam on January 24. When his mother arrived at the hostel and knocked on his door, Parag didn’t respond.
The police said that the hostel operator and other residents were called to open the door, where the student was discovered in a suicidal state. The student was rushed to a private hospital but was declared dead.
Incidentally, both the suicides pertains to the Jawahar Nagar police station of Kota. The police said The reasons behind the suicides are not known, and the cases are being investigated.
Four other student suicides have been reported in Kota this month, starting with the death of 19-year-old Neeraj, who was studying for the Indian Institute of Technology’s JEE entrance test, on January 7.
Twenty-four hours later, a second body was found; 20-year-old Abhishek, also a JEE aspirant.
On January 16, the body of 18-year-old Abhijeet, who wanted to be a doctor, was found. And again, twenty-four hours later, Manan Sharma, 18, died by suicide four days before his JEE appearance.
These suicides have shattered the efforts of stakeholders of Kota coaching industry who were working hard to change the image of the city.
87 young age suicides in five years in Rajasthan. As per a reply furnished by the state government in the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha, a total of 87 teenagers and youngsters have committed suicide in Rajasthan during January 2019 to June 2014. Out of these 87 suicides, three were of the cases of blackmailing while the rest were of depression and mental pressure.
The data reveals that the problem of mental pressure among students is not limited to Kota only. The other emerging coaching hub of Rajasthan, the city of Sikar is also registering such cases as out of 87 cases, 62 were of Kota while 17 occurred in Sikar. Rest eight were registered in other districts.
A civil society activist Vijay Goyal said these figures are worrisome as the youngsters are getting depressed and taking the extreme step.
