NEET, JEE aspirants die by suicide in Kota, 6 cases in January

KOTA: A medical aspirant from Gujarat and an Assam native taking coaching for JEE committed suicide by hanging in Kota within two hours on Wednesday, police said. With their deaths, the coaching hub has witnessed six such cases in the first 22 days of the year.

NEET aspirant Ashfa Sheikh, a native of Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, ended her life by hanging herself in her paying guest room in the Jawahar Nagar area at around 10 am, police said. The 24-year-old woman had taken the medical entrance exam a few times before but could not clear it. She used to take coaching but was currently self-studying, Jawahar Nagar Circle Inspector Ramlaxman said. No suicide note was recovered from her room and the reason behind the extreme step is yet to be ascertained, he added.

As the Jawahar Nagar police were probing Sheikh’s case, just two hours later the Mahaveer Nagar police received information about another student's suicide. At around noon, an 18-year-old JEE aspirant from Assam’s Guwahati committed suicide by hanging himself from an iron angle in his hostel room in the Mahaveer Nagar area, the police said. As per the district administration's guidelines, the hostel authority installed an ‘anti-suicide’ device in the rooms. However, the boy hanged himself to death from an iron angle, the officer said. The boy was scheduled to take the JEE-Mains exam next week and his mother was on her way to Kota to take care of him but the boy took the extreme step hours before she arrived here, the inspector said. No suicide note was recovered from his hostel room, he added. His mother is devastated. The police are waiting for the boy’s uncle to come here from Delhi and the post-mortem will be conducted after that, the officer said.

Both the bodies have been placed in mortuary. Earlier, four JEE aspirants committed suicide in Kota. On January 18, 16-year-old Manan Jain hanged himself at his parents house in Kota’s Bundi. On January 16, Abhijeet Giri from Odisha hanged himself to a ceiling fan in his hostel room in Ambedkar colony. On January 8, 20-year-old Madhya Pradesh native Abhishek hanged himself from a ceiling fan in his PG room. On January 7, Neeraj from Haryana hanged himself from the hook of a ceiling fan at his hostel room. P The city, a prominent hub for coaching institutes, saw 17 such cases in 2024.