A 17-year-old female student who was getting ready to take the NEET-UG exam took her own life in Kota on Saturday evening, a day prior to the national-level medical course entrance test, police officials said.
Hailing from Sheopur in Madhya Pradesh, the student had been staying in Kota with her parents and younger brother for some years. She was studying at one of the city’s premier coaching institutes and was going to take the NEET exam on Sunday.
The incident took place around 10 pm when she was studying in the second floor of their residence. Her relatives were downstairs then. “Around 10 pm, her father went upstairs to check on her and found her hanging. She was rushed to a hospital where she was declared dead,” station house officer Arvind Bharadwaj of Kunadi police station informed.
“Victim was also very much prepared for NEET at the city’s leading coaching center. She was also very much ready to write the exam on Sunday,” added Bharadwaj. No suicide note was recovered from the spot. She was sent for post-mortem examination in the late hours that night.
With this incident, the total number of student suicides in Rajasthan this year has risen to 16 — 15 of them in Kota and one in Jodhpur, according to police records. In 2023, the state had 23 such incidents, 20 of them in Kota. In 2022, 15 suicides were reported from the city. The numbers were 18 in 2019, 20 in 2018, seven in 2017, 17 in 2016, and 18 in 2015. Worth mentioning is that in 2020 and 2021, no such incidents occurred when coaching centres were closed or carried out online because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kota has always been India’s coaching hub, with an estimated ₹10,000 crore worth of test-prep industry each year. Students from all over the country converge in the city after finishing Class 10 to join intense coaching courses to prepare them for competitive exams such as NEET and JEE. The majority also join associated schools, mostly for certification purposes, while academic concentration is in the coaching institutions.
Yet, the pressure-cooker atmosphere and college requirements are taking toll on a large majority of students, particularly those staying away from home. The city’s increasing suicide rates are continuously raising eyebrows about the mental health issues of young ambitions.
