LSR student's suicide: Did not receive documents including bank account details from victim, says DST

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) on Tuesday said it had not received the necessary documents, including bank account details, for the disbursal of scholarship funds from Aishwarya Reddy, a student of the Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College for Women here who died by suicide last week.

Reddy, an IAS aspirant, was found hanging at her Shadnagar house in Telangana's Ranga Reddy district on November 2.

In a suicide note purportedly written by her, the 19-year-old woman said she did not want to burden her parents with her educational expenses.

Reddy was offered the Inspire Scholarship for Higher Education (SHE) under the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scheme of the DST.

She was eligible for a scholarship amount of Rs 60,000 per annum.

"As in other years, the provisional fellowship letters of scholarship were sent out to 9,762 eligible applicants in August this year.

"The students are asked to upload three simple documents like bank account details, mark-sheet, and a bona fide/performance certificate from the college, following which scholarship for the entire year is promptly released. Regretfully, these documents were not received from Aishwarya," the DST said in a statement. It also appealed to all the shortlisted candidates to complete their formalities quickly so that the scholarship amounts can be disbursed at the earliest.

On Monday, members of the Congress-affiliated National Students' Union of India (NSUI) protested outside the residence of Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal "Nishank" here over Reddy's suicide, while the Left-affiliated All India Students' Association (AISA) staged an agitation outside the Delhi University's Arts Faculty.

A group also protested outside the DST at Mehrauli. "We invited five of the student representatives, who were protesting, and showed them all the necessary documents that there was no delay on our part," DST secretary Ashutosh Sharma said.