An 18-year-old aspiring doctor committed suicide in Kota in Rajasthan on Thursday taking the number of student suicides registered in the coaching hub this year to 29, The Times of India reported.
Sumer Ram, a resident of Nagaur, was found hanging in his rented accommodation on Thursday evening.
According to the TOI report, Sumer left behind a suicide note in which he wrote, "Mummy , please forgive me, I am leaving you. I will... stay close to you forever. Please don't remember me. Papa you bore expenses of my studies for two years and never reprimanded me for anything. You gave me lots of money . Brother, please take care of my mummy . Just please look after our parents. I wanted to stay with you forever, but ... I will come back in next life."
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.
Health experts and coaching institutes feel that the rising number of suicides could transform the city from "an educational hub to a stress hub".
"We have come to the conclusion that the suicides are due to immense pressure on the students," said Dr Sudhir Gupta, the convenor of a workshop which was conducted last month to look deeper into the issue of student suicides, told TOI.
"Pressure due to various reasons builds like in a pressure cooker which results in one committing suicide and next we found that the media is a catalyst, as it glorifies suicide with the student who commits suicide portrayed as the hero. The fickle negative mind reading these reports is adversely affected," he said.