3 coaching students, aged 16, 17, 18 years, allegedly die by suicide in Kota

Jaipur, Dec 12: Three students preparing for competitive college entrance examinations in Rajasthan's Kota allegedly died by suicide today. The bodies have been kept in a mortuary and the police have started an investigation to know the facts. The students were 16, 17, and 18 years old.

Two of the students who committed suicide, Ankush and Ujjwal, were from Bihar. They were friends and were staying in the same hostel in adjacent rooms. One was preparing for engineering college entrance, while the other was studying to crack the coveted medical college entrance tests. No suicide notes have been found yet.

The third student, Pranav, came to Kota from Madhya Pradesh, and was preparing for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET -- a pre-medical entrance test.

Known for private coaching centres that provide preparatory classes for competitive engineering and medical examinations, Kota has in the past been plagued with suicide cases.

Students, including many who prepare for highly competitive exams along with their final two years of schooling, have often complained of exacting schedules leading to high stress. In response to widespread media scrutiny of Kota's teen suicides and self-harm cases in the past, the administration had set up a suicide hotline where anxious students could call to seek counselling.

The coaching hub is notorious for pushing students to the edge with long class hours, long assignments, and very competitive internal tests which determine whether a student is promoted or demoted among the many "batches". Top batches get the most sought after teachers.

A student in 2016 had called for all coaching centres to be shuttered, before jumping to her death despite having cracked the highly coveted IIT-JEE mains exams.

In 2019, the Rajasthan government constituted a state-level committee to prepare a legislative draft for regulation of coaching centres to reduce stress among those studying at such institutes. There has been no public information on the draft yet.