Stress part of daily life at premier institute

While Anil Kumar Meena is the latest casualty, several medical aspirants and young doctors have ended their lives after giving into high pressure demands of academics and long work hours at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the last decade.

Exactly two years ago, on March 3, 2010, Balmukund Bharti, final-year MBBS student at AIIMS, hung himself after failing in community medicine paper in his final-year exams. From Kundeshwar village in Tikamgarh district of Madhya Pradesh, Bharti committed suicide after he could not handle the academic pressure.

While his parents accused AIIMS of caste discrimination, which they believed drove their son to commit suicide, the police and AIIMS administration brushed aside the allegations citing lack of evidence.

In 2007, Sunil Kumar (34), senior resident doctor in the department of neurology at AIIMS, ended his life by injecting himself with a muscle-relaxing drug. He was found dead at his brother's house in Noida.

In March 2005, a post-graduate student in the department of radiology at AIIMS, Dr Deepak Aggawal from Mathura, had hung himself at his rented accommodation in Gautam Nagar. Though exact reasons for his death remain unknown, police blamed it on "depression and stress".

Similarly in 2004, Rachit Gupta, a student in the department of neuro-surgery at AIIMS, committed suicide by injecting himself with a muscle relaxant. He killed himself while on duty in the ICU.