Nagendra Kumar Reddy, a final year M.Tech student in Civil Engineering department, was found to have committed suicide in his room in Tamaraparani hostel yesterday. He belonged to Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh and was on L&T’s Build India Scholarship program in IIT Madras. The circumstances of death seem unclear at the present as he did not leave behind any note. A police investigation has been started to look into possible reasons.
The death was reportedly discovered after his friends found him missing classes on Monday, which prompted one of them to go looking out for him. During dinner time, they found his room dark and looked in through the door ventilator opening, only to find him dead.
Prof. Arul Jayachandran, Faculty Advisor of MITR, the student guidance and counselling unit, told T5E that, “Soon after the incident was discovered, Dean Students, Dean Academic Courses, CCW and CMO co-operated with police investigators at the site of the incident, Tambi hostel. The parents were informed through the boy’s cousin and standard procedures were followed for the legal process enabling his parents to perform the last rites. The Dean of Academic Courses and CCW were there with the parents all through the process at the police station and mortuary. The management arranged logistics and bore the expenses for the body to be sent back to his native.”
Dr. Arul added that the administration and MITR have taken the necessary steps to counsel his traumatized friends and room neighbours who discovered the suicide. He also said that there will be a similar exercise with his classmates and L&T UoP group of Civil Engineering. Although MITR has already put a counselling program in place for those in need, they have decided to take necessary steps to strengthen the outreach of these programs, in the light of this incident.
Though the case remains mysterious, recent developments conclude that the time of death might have been late in the morning on Monday, soon after returning from home from the Ganesh Chaturthi weekend. There’s also positive information that his academic performance was decent – with a greater than 7 CGPA and 700+ GATE score. He had also seemingly performed very well in a presentation on Wednesday, before leaving for home on Thursday for Ganesh Chaturthi. However, his friends have remarked that he was an introvert and nothing was known to them about his family background. In such a context, none of them possibly imagined that he harbored this extreme a thought.
In an official statement, institute has said – and we echo the feeling – that, “IIT Madras is deeply saddened to report the death of a student on its campus on 21 September 2015. The student has been identified as a M. Tech scholar from Andhra Pradesh. The police is investigating the death and the Institute is cooperating with the Police in its investigation. At this time, we have no indication of the reason for death. The student’s parents have been notified. The Institute offers its deepest condolences to the parents for the unfortunate and devastating loss.”
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