An 18-year-old girl reportedly died by suicide in Karnataka’s Kalaburgi district, days after she appeared for the NEET-UG 2026 exam which was later canceled by the National Testing Agency (NTA) over allegations of paper leak.
The teenage student’s father said her first exam went well, and he did not know what prompted her to take the extreme step, news agency PTI reported on Sunday.
She passed the PUC exam with 92 percent, he said. The Karnataka School Examination and Evaluation Board released the second PUC results in April this year.
The news agency quoted the father as saying: “There was no distress or problem in our family, and we lived happily.” However, he also wondered if his daughter had “some feelings” about writing NEET again.
“She did well (in NEET), and everything was going well. Maybe she had some feelings in her mind about writing NEET again. I’m not blaming anyone, I’m not accusing anyone. We don’t know her pain or suffering. What can I say?” Her father told the media when he collapsed after her death.
NEET re-exam stress
NEET-UG 2026 exam was conducted on May 3, but was canceled after paper leak was confirmed. The Ministry of Education later announced that the re-examination would be held on June 21.
Despite assurances to students about a full refund of medical entrance exam fees and special provisions such as an additional 15 minutes for exam procedures, students are still anxious about re-testing, and the sudden cancellation of the May 3 exam came as a big shock.
Read also: CBI is questioning parents who bought leaked NEET paper for their children
Many believe that they performed well during the first time and are skeptical about repeating this performance again.
The Karnataka student who died by suicide did not leave a note behind, PTI quoted a police source as saying. A case has been registered in this regard under the jurisdiction of Station Bazar police station.
Suicide after cancellation of NEET exam
The Kalaburgi case is not the first case of a NEET student dying by suicide. A Rajasthan aspirant Sekhar, whose family expected him to score nearly 650 marks after his first NEET exam, died by suicide after it was cancelled.
Read also: ‘Emotionally shattered, under enormous mental pressure’: How NEET-UG paper leak claimed the lives of these aspirants
A similar incident took place in Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, where an aspirant who was very confident of clearing the exam in the third attempt died by suicide. No note was found in that case either, but family members linked his death to the stress he caused after the exam was cancelled.
Discussing suicides can be triggering for some. However, suicides can be prevented. Some of the major helpline numbers for suicide prevention in India are 011-23389090 from Soumyatri (Delhi based) and 044-24640050 from Sneha Foundation (Chennai based).
