BTech student ends life after post-Covid depression

A final-year BTech student allegedly killed himself by jumping before a moving train near Anekal in South Bengaluru on Friday. Police say he had tested positive for Covid-19 and gone into depression after being discharged from the hospital.

Suneel Kumar, 22, a resident of Mayasandra near Anekal, was a final-year student at a private college on Chandapura Road. He left home around 6 pm on Friday, telling his mother that he was going for a walk. But the family got worried and started searching for him after he didn’t return home even late in the evening, a senior police officer said.

Police believe that Kumar jumped before the train at Aravantikepalya village around 8.30 pm. The train’s loco pilot called the Baiyappanahalli railway police station, which has jurisdiction over the area. A team of railway police rushed to the spot and moved the body for post-mortem. They also passed a message to Anekal police to ascertain the victim’s identity.

Meantime, Kumar’s father, Suryanarayana Swamy, approached the police, seeking help to trace him. Swamy, a businessman, told the police that his son caught the coronavirus infection a month ago and had been in depression after being discharged from hospital. He had stopped talking to his parents or attending college. He was undergoing counselling.

Police say they haven’t found a death note, so it’s unclear what drove Kumar to the extreme step.

The case of another suicide

Last Monday, a 21-year-old engineering student had allegedly jumped to death from the seventh floor of his college building. Jayanth K Reddy, a third-semester computer science student at Bangalore Institute of Technology (BIT), left a death note behind, saying he was “under depression and mental pain every day”. He said he was looking for an exit and was bidding goodbye. He wanted to do many things but was not able to. He was also undergoing counselling.