IIT student commits suicide

Indo-Asian News Service
Kanpur, May 31, 2008

A fourth year engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur committed suicide by hanging herself in her hostel room, the police said on Saturday.

Toya Chatterjee, 23, was a student of biological science and biotechnical engineering department. She was found dead in her room late on Friday night.

The police recovered a suicide note from the room written in Bengali. The note, addressed to her father, said: "I will not be able to get B Tech degree this year. I am ashamed of it. So I am ending my life. Take care of my mother after my death."

Director of the institute Sanjay G. Dhande said that Chatterjee was a brilliant student and had recently cleared the Common Admission Test (CAT) for admission to the Indian Institutes of Management.

But she was not keeping well for the past one year and was under the treatment of a private doctor. Due to her illness, she was not attending her classes regularly, he said.
Dhande said the counsellors at the institute had informed her father thrice about her physical health and her state of depression.

Her friends also said that she was upset over her inability to submit her project work.
This is the second suicide at the institute in the last two months. On April 8, a first year engineering student had committed suicide by hanging himself.