A 20-year-old engineering student allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in his house in Madambakkam in Chennai on Tuesday. He has blamed the Head of a department of his college for his death in a suicide note.
Hemanth Chandran, a student of New Prince Shri Bhavani College of Engineering at Vengaivasal in Chennai, was found dead in his house on Tuesday night. “I and my wife came back from work and found the door locked around 7:30 pm, we kept calling our son after some time, we broke open the door to find our son hanging,” said Ramesh, Hemanth’s father.
In the suicide note, Hemanth had written that his college is responsible for his death. “I have the desire to study but I’m unable to study in this college. Sorry, Amma. HOD does not allow me to study, he had said that he won’t let me study and he did the same. He has debarred me, there are many in my class who have less attendance but he only targeted me,” he wrote in his suicide note.
He was being allegedly harassed by the college professors and his HOD for the past one year, said Ramesh. “Even when he went to college, they would not enter his attendance. I was called thrice to the college saying that he is short of attendance. But in the last three months, they did not inform me that he had not been going to college. If they wanted to correct my son, they should have informed me,” Ramesh said.
Ramesh believes that it was his son's habit of point out errors in what the professors said in class is what got him into trouble.
"My son has always been a brilliant student. They got offended by him and started repeatedly scolding him and not putting his attendance,” said Ramesh.
He added that Hemanth was an outstanding student in school and he was doing well for the first one-and-a-half years of college. “But after that, his performance started dipping due to the harassment of the college professors,” he said.
Ramesh said that Hemanth did not look upset on Tuesday morning. “He had told us that he is leaving for college, we never expected him to do this. We thought it is just this one last year and then he will pass out and become an engineer,” he said.
An FIR has been registered at the Selaiyur police station under Section 174 of CrPc. The inspector of the police station said that the case is under investigation and the sections of the case will be altered later if required. However, no arrests have been made in the case.
When TNM contacted Swaminathan, the Director of the college, he denied that Hemanth was harassed by the HOD or the professors. “Hemanth had not written the fifth-semester examination as Anna University had denied him hall ticket due to a shortage of attendance. He was not attending college for the past three months, he must have committed suicide for some other reason and blamed our college,” he said.