Date:07/03/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/07/stories/2008030757690100.htm

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Exam fever claims two more lives

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Sheer pressure to do well in examinations purportedly drove two young girls to claim their own lives in different parts of the Capital during the past 24 hours.

Twenty-year-old Dolly, a Bachelor of Arts student of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee College, was found hanging from the ceiling of her bathroom in Sector 3 of Rohini on Thursday morning. She went to her room on the second floor around 7-30 a.m. and did not come out for a long time. Her anxious father, Mohan Lal, a Senior Superintendent at the Union Petroleum Ministry, went upstairs and found Dolly hanging from the ceiling with a “chunni”.

Mr. Lal rushed her to nearby Jaipur Golden Hospital where she was declared brought dead. The hospital authorities later reported the matter to the police.

“Preliminary investigations revealed that the girl had not been performing well in her college internal examinations and had also fared poorly in her Class XII Board examinations last year. She was passing through severe depression and that probably forced her to take the extreme step. Both her elder brothers are qualified engineers, a fact that might have put additional pressure on her to do well in her studies,” said a senior police officer.

In the other tragic case, Manju, a Class XI student of Delhi Government Senior Secondary School, was found hanging in her house at Jehangirpuri on Wednesday evening. The teenager had not performed well in her Sanskrit paper earlier in the day and was admonished by her parents.

“When she returned home from school, her parents scolded her for not performing well in her studies and even threatened to withdraw her from school. She hanged herself around 8 p.m. when she was alone at home,” said a senior police officer.

Post-mortem was conducted at Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital on Thursday morning and the body was handed over to the family which lives in Jehangirpuri D block. Her father Ramlal is a daily-wage worker.

Counting these two, a total of three young girls have ended their lives in different parts of the Capital in the past three days because of examination fever. Sixteen-year-old Tanvi, a Class XI student, had shot herself with her father’s licensed pistol in her house at Saraswati Vihar on Tuesday. Tanvi’s school had summoned her parents to discuss her poor performance in some subjects.