Another suicide rocks IIT Kanpur

Her father, Kunal Chatterjee, unaware of his daughter’s failure had arrived here on Friday to see Toya get the degree at the convocation ceremony. He went to meet Toya in her room around 11 pm and found the door locked from inside. He, along with other girls of the hostel, broke open the door to find her hanging with a rope from the ceiling fan.

A student of Bio Sciences and Bio Engineering, Toya was declared ineligible for getting her degree on Saturday, as she had failed in her final semester. Instead, she was told to apply for the summer course, on passing which she would have been awarded the degree in July this year. She had gone to her parental home in Kolkata for a week but did not inform them about her failure.

IIT-K Director Sanjay Govind Dhande said Toya was suffering from depression and was not physically fit. “On several occasions, her parents had been apprised of the matter by the Dean of Student Affairs and Project Guide,” he said. “She often remained absent from the classes, and was an average student,” he added.

Though the IIT-K authorities referred to Toya as an “average student,” her performance shows otherwise. She had cleared CAT examination and had offers from all the six IIMs in the country.

On April 18, Prashant Kumar Kureel, a first year B Tech student, had also committed suicide.

Fatal Facts

•November 6, 2005: PhD student Abhilash commits suicide by consuming poison.

•November 30, 2005: Swapnil Chandrakant Bhaskar jumps to death from a building.

•May 3, 2006: Shailesh Kumar Sharma hangs himself to death.

•April 25, 2007: J Bharadwaj jumps before a moving train.

•April 18, 2008: Prashant Kumar Kureel hangs himself to death in his hostel room.

•May 30, 2008: BTech final year student Toya Chatterjee hangs herself to death.