A 17-year-old girl in Rajasthan cracked the IIT-JEE but ended her life a day later as she did not want to pursue a career in engineering.
Kriti Tripathi, who hailed from Ghaziabad, jumped to death from a five-storey building in Kota, leaving a five-page note. She was declared brought dead to a local hospital.
The girl lived with her parents in Kota. She was a student in one of the many coaching institutes in the city.
According to a report in the Hindustan Times, Kriti was the fifth student to commit suicide in a city that is illustrious for producing a great number of IIT students. Many coaching institutes in the city have made huge fortunes by training candidates for different entrance exams including the Joint Entrance Exam (mains) that is considered to be the toughest in the country.
Students who clear the mains qualify for the advanced exams that secure them a place in an IIT.
Experts claim that most of the suicides are due to fear of failure and the burden of expectations.
This year, around 35,000 students from different institutes in Kota cleared the IIT-JEE.
“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,” Kota’s superintendent of police S. S. Godara told the Hindustan Times.
He added that Kriti had outdone the candidates in the general category as she had scored 144 marks while the cut-off was 100.
More than 1.5 lakh students from across the country enroll in 40-odd coaching institutes in the city each year to prepare for the highly competitive and challenging entrance examinations.
Recently, several coaching institutes had jointly launched a 24-hour helpline to offer counselling, track callers suffering from depression and provide assistance.
The district administration had also asked all the coaching institutes to screen the students seeking admission and assess the child’s chances of cracking the entrance exams.
