Colleges are a place for blooming memories of ones adolescent; when we walk down the lane of memories, we have millions of beautiful memories to recall. However, Amrutha Engineering College Parappana Agrahara, Bengaluru has made those memories for the current batches of students studying. A 22-year-old final BTech student of the said college committed suicide on Monday morning.
Many students had rushed to the spot where Harsha had fallen, while some tended to the student as he gasped for breath, others started taking photos and shooting videos on their mobile phones. Members of the college staff also arrived at the spot and tried to clean the bloodstains and also snatched phones from students and prohibited them from shooting.
The college is one of the numerous institutions run by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham under Kerala-based spiritual leader Amritanandamayi.
As per the reports, it is said that Sri Harsha, hailed from Andhra Pradesh and was living in the college hostel. Harsha and other students complained to the management about the shortage of water and standard food in their hostel block on September 23. As they did not receive any favourable response from the college management, they staged a protest wherein windows of lab, classrooms and college buses were damaged.
Following the event, the college was discontinued on September 24 and closed from September 25 for Dasara. After which a disciplinary committee was conducted, and around 20 students including Harsha was suspended for a year and management asked them to pay Rs. 25,00 as fine Rs. 50,000 as caution deposit- says the report.
Though the parents of the suspended students tried to approach the management, they were not even allowed to enter the college premises.
“I came here on Monday to request the management to cancel the disciplinary action against my son. But they did not allow me inside the campus. My son went inside, and I later came to know he had committed suicide by jumping off the hostel building. The college staff promptly cleaned the blood from the spot where my son had fallen and tried to destroy the evidence – said Mr Vijay Bhaskar (Sri Harsha’s Father) to media.
The deceased Harsha, Electronics and Communication student had recently received two college placement job offers of Rs 16 lakh a year and another of Rs. 20 lakh per year.
DCP Isha Pant confirmed that Harsha had appeared before the disciplinary committee and they had threatened him, stating that he was the reason behind the vandalisation. Moreover, they said to cancel his placement as well. Amidst the thick negotiation with the management, he rushed out of the college office and jumped to his death.
DCP Pant also confirmed that Parappana Agrahara police had registered a case of abetment of Section 306 (abetment of suicide) and Section 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of an offence or giving false information) against the college.
Following the incident, students had protested against the management stated that the college authorities harassed their friend. The protest ended up when the Parappana Agrahara police assured them that strict actions would be taken against the people involved in the case.
Some students affirmed that the college authorities had initially tried to pass off the death as an accident and had even sought to remove the CCTV footage.
It seems like student suicides aren’t new to this college, as in 2012 Jitendra Sai, a 20-year-old student of electronics and instrumentation engineering, allegedly hanged himself in the hostel room. His peers at that time alleged college management and asked them to reduce academic pressure. They sought strict action against S.G Rakesh, the associate director who’s responsible for formulating academic rules.
The students can hope that there won’t be any more such heart-wrenching incidents in future as police have affirmed to take strict actions.
