A 20-year-old student, who was scheduled to reappear for the National Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to undergraduate medical courses on Sunday, died after falling from the third floor of a building in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore late on Thursday night. This is the latest in a series of such cases since the test was canceled on May 12 due to the paper being hacked.
The student’s 20-year-old sister said that the student was under tremendous pressure, as this was her last chance to pass the exam after three failed attempts. The aspirant was taken to hospital in critical condition, where she died on Friday from her injuries.
Prima facie, it is a suicide, but they are not ruling out the possibility of an accident, said Santosh Dudhi, a police officer. He added: “Her mobile phone was confiscated, as she was talking to someone at the time of her fall. The forensic laboratory team examined the scene of the accident.”
The aspirant, the daughter of a doctor from Dhar, was living with her sister in Indore. Her sister said: “She failed three times, but this time she was confident of passing the exam. After the exam was cancelled, she was under pressure. We enrolled her in the pharmacy course and advised her not to feel pressure, but she was not ready to give up on her dream of becoming a doctor.”
The NEET (undergraduate) exam was rescheduled after the exam was canceled on May 12, though 2.27 million students had taken it across 551 cities. Central agencies found that the question paper had been hacked. Questions were available on some phones as early as May 1, two days before the exam. This was the second time in two years that NEET had come under scrutiny
On Thursday, the 20-year-old aspirant was speaking to her cousin at around 11:30pm before going to the second floor of her building. Minutes later, she fell from the roof.
Investigators said her family encouraged her to pursue another career after the aspirant attempted suicide in January. They recorded statements from her family.
The opposition Congress, which is protesting against alleged irregularities in NEET, blamed the government for the death in Indore. “Now in Indore too: An aspirant fell from the third floor and died in the hospital. Her elder sister said she felt stressed due to the paper leaking! The number of deaths caused by the government is on the rise, but why is the resignation of the guilty party, the education minister, not being sought? ” State Congress president Jitu Patwari said in X.
Two NEET aspirants died in Uttarakhand and Rajasthan this week, and police suspect both cases to be suicides. In Dehradun, a 23-year-old woman who was preparing for NEET was found dead in her room. A handwritten note recovered from the spot allegedly indicated that the woman was depressed.
In Rajasthan’s Sikar district, a 22-year-old NEET student was found dead before his third attempt.
