In the coaching city of Kota, student suicides still continue at an alarming rate. In the 3 weeks of January alone, 6 students have killed themselves. On Thursday, January 23, a girl named Afsa Sheikh from Ahmedabad, Gujarat was found hanging in her rented room. She had been staying in Kota since June 2023 to prepare for NEET.
The girl’s family informed that she seemed a bit upset over a phone call to family on Sunday after her weekly tests. She had informed her mother that she plans to sleep in late on the next day and will call her after 10 am. The family grew worried when the call never came. Sheikh was a student at a premier coaching institute at the Old Rajiv Gandhi Nagar area in Kota city.
On the same day, another boy named Parag, a resident of Assam, was found hanging in his hostel room in Mahavir Nagar.
Sheikh was not alone in the alarming statistics of student suicides in Kota. The city, called the ‘coaching factory’ in India due to its multiple coaching institutes and an entire city economy developed around coaching centre, student hostels, PGs and associated businesses, has been grappling with student suicide cases every month.
In January alone, 6 students have killed themselves in the coaching city. The district administration and coaching institutes have been trying to project a healthier image of Kota, conducting awareness sessions for students and trying to offer help. In recent months it has been reported that Kota’s booming economy has been badly hit by the ‘negative image’ created by relentless student suicides. Coaching centre enrolments and demand for hostel rooms have come down drastically.
