HYDERABAD: An inconsolable Srinivas, 48, still cannot come to terms with the fact that his 20-year-old son is no more. Srinivas kept recalling how Siddharth, a third-year student of computer science and engineering at IIT, Hyderabad, had promised to visit home on Tuesday. As the post-mortem examination was being carried out at the Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad, Srinivas said, before breaking into sobs, “He promised yesterday that he would meet us today [Tuesday] when I spoke to him. He didn’t come home for Diwali citing that he had an exam a day after the festival.”
In a mail sent to his friends minutes before jumping off the hostel building early on Tuesday, Siddharth said that he was struggling to deal with his poor academic performance, among other misfortunes. He also stated that he had been feeling mentally exhausted for the last two months and had finally decided to end his life. However, in the suicide note, Siddharth did not directly blame the institute for the decision in any manner.
“He was always a meritorious student who secured 100 per cent marks in academics. It was his dream to study in IIT. He was shortlisted for several top engineering institutes in the country. We never forced him to do engineering,” said Srinivas, a software professional himself. “Siddharth never seemed to be stressed, and he was free to do whatever he wanted to do,” the grief-struck father added.
On Monday night, Siddharth had called his mother and spoken for nearly 15 minutes. His mother reportedly could not sense anything wrong with her son as he reportedly did not say anything out of the ordinary, Siddharth’s uncle Laxmi Narayana, told TNIE.