The Hindu : New Delhi News : Exam fever claims two young lives

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Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Exam fever claims two young lives

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Wilting under pressure to do well in their examinations, two young girls purportedly committed suicide in different parts of the Capital on Monday.

Nineteen-year-old Priyanka, daughter of a senior journalist with a leading Hindi daily, hanged herself at her Gulmohar Park residence in South Delhi.

Enquiries by the police revealed that Priyanka, a second year graduation student of Sri Venkateswara College, was to take an internal college examination on Monday. Her father was waiting to drop her at college in his vehicle when a visitor came calling.

When Priyanka did not show up for a long time, the father knocked at her door several times but did not get any response.

Assuming that she was in the bathroom, he rang up the phone in her room from his mobile phone, but there was no reply. Suspecting that something was amiss, he raised an alarm.

The police were called in and the door was forced open. Priyanka was found hanging from the ceiling with a “dupatta”. She was rushed to a nearby hospital where all attempts to revive her failed and she was later declared dead.

The police did not find any suicide note in her room. The body was handed over to the family after post-mortem. Inquest proceedings are on.

In the day’s other incident, a Class XII student of a government school in East Vinod Nagar allegedly hanged herself in her house at Mandawli. Varsha and her father, who is a Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited employee, had on Monday morning gone to school to collect her roll number for the upcoming Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) examinations. After dropping her home, her father left for office.

According to the police, the tragic incident came to light around 4 p.m. when Varsha’s mother returned from the vegetable market and found the girl hanging from the ceiling. Though no suicide note was found from the spot, the police suspect that examination pressure forced her to take the extreme step.

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