Teachers unaware about his health

The fact that 22-year-old Rocky Rai, a student of Delhi University's (DU) Zakir Husain College, failed to clear his semester exams last year was known to everyone but very few were aware of his medical condition. Shaswati Das reports.

The fact that 22-year-old Rocky Rai, a student of Delhi University's (DU) Zakir Husain College, failed to clear his semester exams last year was known to everyone but very few were aware of his medical condition.

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Not only was he trying to cope with the pressure of having failed his BSc (electronics) first semester examinations last year, his battle with brain tumour was also fast turning into a lost cause.

On Wednesday night, he committed suicide by jumping off the third-floor of the hospital he was admitted at after he attempted suicide.

"Rocky was a student with us last year but he failed all his papers in the first semester. As per University guidelines, we had to promote him to the second semester. But it is unclear whether he appeared for the subsequent exams. We found out that he had been operated upon for brain tumour. So it is possible that he skipped his second semester exams following the surgery," said a senior professor of the Department of Electronics.

And it was his health condition that caught his college teachers off guard.

"We learnt much later that he had tumour. Maybe that was the beginning of his decline. We used to spot him in college but he had stopped attending classes. Yesterday when we heard that he had been admitted in the hospital after a suicide attempt, we were shocked. But it was really tragic that he ended his life this way," added the professor.

After Rai's supposed absence from the second semester exams, his education came to an abrupt halt.

Following this, he had enrolled into a Russian language course conducted by the same college for some time. He then tried his hand at electronics again when he appeared for the exams as an ex-student.

"Rai sat for the exams as an ex student because his name had been struck off the main rolls. But we have no clue where he checked his result because after the results came out on Wednesday morning, the regular list did not have his roll number," he added.