‘Pressure to score higher’: Delhi teen's family blames school over suicide at metro station

The boy's father said the teachers kept pressuring him to score better marks, and the child repeatedly told them “he was trying”.

The father of the 16-year-old boy who died, allegedly by suicide at a metro station in central Delhi, has blamed his teachers and school principal for pushing him to take the extreme step.

The police control received a call around 3pm on Tuesday about a boy falling from a metro station building in west Delhi.(PTI File/Representative Image) (RAJ K RAJ /HT PHOTO)

The father alleged that his son was being “troubled over petty issues”. The suicide note recovered from the boy's possession also claimed that he was being ill-treated by his teachers.

Alleged ill-treatment at school

“For the last one year, my son was being scolded and troubled by his teachers over petty issues. He told us about it, and we raised our concerns with his teachers but nothing happened. Even his friends were troubled by those teachers,” the boy's father told HT earlier.

He said the teachers kept pressuring the boy to score better marks, and the child repeatedly told them “he was trying”.

The boy had been studying in the prominent school in central Delhi and his parents were planning to shift him to another school after Class 10. “We asked him to continue till the board exams because the school has discretion over 20 (internal) marks,” he said.

The father said that they tried raising the issue with the school management, but their concerns were dismissed saying that the boy needs to focus during classes.

"They would say that his Math grades are poor and he doesn't like to focus on his studies," he said before leaving for their native place in Sangli in Maharashtra for the cremation," the father was quoted as saying by NDTV.

What happened on day of suicide

However, on Tuesday evening, he died by suicide at a metro station in west Delhi, leaving behind a suicide note in which he said that his last wish was that no student should be treated the way he was, and said that four teachers he named in the note “must be punished”.

According to reports, on the day of the suicide, the boy had reportedly fainted during dance practice on stage after which the teachers had ‘publicly insulted and rebuked’ him and had dismissed it as fake.

When the boy insisted that he had fainted and began crying, the teacher allegedly called it fake too, as he quoted the incident mentioned in his son's suicide note recovered by police. One of the teachers told him 'cry as much as you want, it doesn't matter to me', his father was quoted as saying by NDTV.

Discussing suicides can be triggering for some. However, suicides are preventable. A few major suicide prevention helpline numbers in India are 011-23389090 from Sumaitri (Delhi-based) and 044-24640050 from Sneha Foundation (Chennai-based).