The body of a 16-year-old Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) aspirant, who left his hostel for a routine test on February 11 and went missing, was found on February 19, Monday night, stuck between two trees on a rock in a forest area in Rajasthan's Kota, police said. The boy was last spotted via CCTV footage near the Garadiya Mahadev temple forest on February 11, they added.
Giving more details, police said it was a case of suicide, which takes the number of incidents of students of various coaching centres opting for the extreme step to four this year in Kota. Besides this, two BTech students from different universities died by suicide earlier this month. Kota is known for several coaching centres preparing students for competitive exams.
Speaking of this, the Superintendent of Police (Kota City) Amrita Duhan told the media that a 16-year-old Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) aspirant has been missing from a Kota hostel room for a week now and an intensive search operation is underway to trace him. The body of the JEE aspirant, identified as Rachit Sondhya (16), a resident of Rajgarh district in Madhya Pradesh, was found in the forest near the Garadiya Mahadev temple late on Monday evening, February 19.
Sondhya was preparing for the IIT-JEE. The post-mortem examination was conducted on the night of February 19 after obtaining the district collector's permission and the body was handed over to the deceased's family members, the SP added, reported PTI.
How it happened
Narrating how the unfortunate incident happened, police said that Sondhya left his hostel room in Mahaveer Nagar-1, located within the Jawahar Nagar police station limits, for a routine test at around noon on February 11. He was last spotted via CCTV footage hiring a taxi and reaching the Garadiya Mahadev temple forest. He was seen entering the forest. The bag, mobile phone, a power bank, the room keys and a few other belongings of the boy were found at a distance of around 200 metres from the temple on February 12.
Around 60-70 police personnel, besides the members of the Kota Municipal Corporation squad and 40-50 family members of the deceased, eventually spotted the body stuck between two trees on a rock at a distance of around a kilometre and a half from the spot where the boy's belongings were found, police said.
Another student missing
One more JEE aspirant, Piyush Kapasia (17), is still missing and special teams have been formed to trace him, the officer added. It is a case of suspected suicide and police have lodged a case under section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) for investigation, Circle Inspector at the Jawahar Nagar police station Vasudev Singh said.
Kapasia, who hails from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, left his hostel room for a test on February 13. He neither returned to his room nor responded to his parent's phone calls, following which, his family members arrived in Kota and lodged a missing report at the Jawahar Nagar police station.
According to the family members, the 16-year-old boy has been preparing for the IIT-JEE in Kota for two years. He took the recent JEE Main exam and scored only 13 percentile. The boy was last seen in CCTV footage at the Kota railway station with a bag in his hand, police said.
