A 14-year-old boy committed suicide in Kota on Sunday, taking the number of student suicides registered in the coaching hub this year to 30, The Times of India reported.
Bhanu Kumar was found hanging from a fan in his hostel room just a day after the district administration conducted a "masti ki pathshala" session for the 1.20 lakh students enrolled with all coaching institutes in Kota in an attempt to de-stress them.
Kumar is the youngest student at a Kota coaching institute to have committed suicide in three years, according to the report.
The TOI report further states, "Kumar, from Saharsa in Bihar, came to Kota when he was just 13. He was enrolled in class IX at a school here and at a coaching major for an edge course in science subjects. Unlike in other suicide cases, Kumar was under no pressure as he had two-and-a-half years to go for any competitive exam."
Police however found that he attended his coaching classes irregularly.
Just last week, an 18-year-old aspiring doctor committed suicide in Kota by hanging himself in his rented accommodation.
Following the spate of student suicides in Kota of late, the district administration recently asked coaching institutes to give a mandatory weekly off to students and advised them not to use advertisement with photographs of its toppers.
"We suggested to them to not use pictures of toppers for their advertisements. Instead, we advised them to use blank ads with a message saying their child would learn and be proficient in advanced mathematics and physics… something like that would be a reasonable promise instead of saying everyone could top the exams," District Collector Ravikumar Surpur told The Indian Express.
In the last five years, at least 56 students studying in different institutes in Kota have reportedly committed suicide, with most of them attributed to the fear of failure.