Posted on 05/04/2006 12:58:16 AM PDT by HarmlessLovableFuzzball
KANPUR: A 23-year-old Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) student, Shailesh Sharma, on Wednesday committed suicide by hanging himself in his hostel[dorm] room. A resident of Pande Mohal, Nariya in Varanasi, the deceased was a final year student of dualdegree programme at the chemical engineering department.
IIT-K officials claimed that the student might have taken the extreme step under depression after coming to know that he had failed in two courses —advanced thermodynamics and advanced fluid-mechanics. The exams had got over only on Wednesday after which Shailesh had seen the F grading in the two subjects.
According to Shailesh’s batchmates, he had failed in advanced thermodynamics for third time in a row and had shared his failure and acute distress with his classmates. "On Tuesday, he came to know about his failure and was quite depressed. Today he committed suicide after having lunch with us," said a student, who was with Shailesh minutes before he ended his life.
"Though we can’t draw any conclusion, it is true that he had done badly in two courses. This might be the reason behind the incident," said dean of students affairs (DOSA) Prawaal Sinha. Sinha said that the body had been sent for postmortem and parents of the deceased had been informed about the incident.
The incident invited strong reaction from the students who claimed that authorities could have saved Shailesh’s life by changing his course options. Hundreds of students assembled at Hall One where Shailesh used to live and demanded that the grading be made public. They also took to task Professor RB Chhabra of advanced thermo-dynamics who was present there. "We want to know whether Shailesh was intentionally being harassed by the authorities," said an enraged student.
On November 30, a similar case was witnessed when mechanical engineering second-year student Dharaskar Swapnil Chandrakant had committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the administrative block. The IIT-K authorities had then attributed stress as factor behind the incident. Shailesh is the fifth IIT-K student to have committed suicide.
Civil engineering student M Chowdhary had hanged himself in 1981 and third-year mechanical engineering student Yadapalli Venkat and another student Vimal Jha had taken the extreme step in 1987 and 1999 respectively.
Mea culpa. Replied to the wrong pos. Sorry :)
What makes you say that?
People are indeed passed through the grades based on quotas. That has been happening for years.
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