Bad scores in JEE Mains did not kill 17-year-old Kriti Tripathi, the girl who jumped to her death from a five-storey building in Kota on April 28, 2016. “It’s not because of bad scores in JEE Mains. I was expecting worse. It’s because I’ve started hating myself to the extent that I want to kill myself,” Tripathi wrote in a desperate suicide note.
Just this week, Kota saw yet another suicide when an 18-year-old student, who was preparing for the Indian Institutes of Technology Joint Entrance Examination, took his life on Tuesday (August 15) night. After this incident, Kota District Collector Om Prakash Bunkar ordered all hostels and paying guest accommodations to install spring-loaded fans “to provide students mental support and security.”
Such fans collapse when a certain amount of weight is applied to them. But this measure, apparently to prevent suicides, has received a stinging backlash on social media, where netizens are asking for a greater focus on mental health rather than optics.