"Barun Mishra, 31, was at the exam hall when he suddenly complained of chest pain. The professor there immediately called up an ambulance and he was taken to the healthcentre located in the campus," Registrar of IIT-Kanpur, Sanjeev Kasalkar said.
Mishra, who used to suffer from high blood pressure and asthma, was at the exam hall for around one-and-half-hour when he felt the pain, he said.
Kasalkar said the scholar, who was a resident of Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh, had died by the time the doctors could examine him.
Talks with the hostel friends of the deceased revealed that he was undergoing treatment for high blood pressure and asthma, the registrar said, adding that there was no record that Mishra had earlier suffered any cardiac arrest.
Mishra had done his MTech in material science from IIT-Kanpur in 2008. After searching for jobs for sometime, he joined the Phd programme in December, 2010.
The relatives of the deceased have been contacted and efforts are on to collect information about him from the students living in the hostel, he said.
When asked whether the institute would set up a committee to look into the incident, Kasalkar said, "we are waiting for Mishra's relatives. If they request for a similar probe, we will do it accordingly."
On the query if the deceased was under any stress due to the examination, he said no such fact came out after talking with Mishra's hostel friends.
Meanwhile, circle officer of Kalyanpur police station, Shailendra Lal said the body was sent for postmortem as the death has taken place under mysterious circumstances.
"The cause of the death will be known once we get the postmortem report," he said, adding a search was being carried out in the hostel room where Mishra used to stay.
Kasalkar said that the postmortem has not yet been conducted. The decision regarding this will be done once the relatives of the deceased arrives here.
A pall of gloom has descended in the campus after the news of the death spread among the students.