BENGALURU: The International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-B) campus in Electronics City was drowned in shock, sorrow and disbelief on Friday morning where a 20-year-old M.Tech student was found dead near the hostel block. Police suspect that Goluguri Sai Sarath committed suicide by jumping off the seventh floor of the hostel building.
Sarath, a native of Hyderabad, was studying in the fourth year of the Integrated M.Tech course. He has not left behind any suicide note and the reason for him ending his life is yet to be ascertained.
A senior police officer said the body was found at 4.40am. Hostel inmates heard the noise and alerted the security guards, who in turn, informed to the police. The postmortem was conducted at Victoria hospital and the body was handed over to the parents.
During preliminary investigations, police found that Sarath and 12 of his friends had gone to attend the birthday party of Rahul, a classmate, at a restaurant in BTM Layout. They returned to the hostel around 10.30pm. According to his friends, he was normal and showed no signs of being upset.
Their entry and exit from the campus has been recorded on CCTV cameras installed in the premises. But there was no CCTV camera on seventh floor of the hostel building where Sarath was living. He may have reached the terrace through a fire escape, police said.
His parents K Sudha and G Kodanda Rama Reddy, an Income Tax officer in Hyderabad, who arrived from Hyderabad on Friday, told Electronics City police that he did not reveal anything to them during his recent visit. He had returned to the campus on August 1. “He was a very quiet boy and never used to mingle with crowds. He had only a few friends at college and never shared any problems. So the parents and friends are still puzzled why he ended his life,’’ police said.
Big shock, says IIIT-B director
IIIT-B director Prof S Sadagopan, in a press statement, said the Institute is extending all cooperation to the investigating officers and providing support to the bereaved family According to IIIT-B registrar Sridhar, the student was academically very good and performed well in class. “There could be no known academic pressure on anyone like him. His classes also had just started and no exams were scheduled around the next couple of weeks. Since the hostel only has single accommodations, none of his friends knew what may have been troubling him,” he said.