Dalit student commits suicide, teachers booked

LUCKNOW - Repeated failures at the examinations led a final year medical student at the King George’s Medical University here in Uttar Pradesh to allegedly end his life by consuming poison here.

The body of Sushil Kumar Chaudhary, 26, was found in his rented home in the Kanpur Road Lucknow Development Authority colony Sunday.

In the suicide note, the youth blamed some of his teachers for driving him to take the extreme step. He had failed four times in his examinations.

His father Dhruv Nath Singh registered a case against four faculty members besides the university registrar V.P. Singh.

Alleging gross discrimination by these teachers, the father claimed that Sushil was often reminded of his Scheduled Caste background and told that he should give up his dream of becoming a doctor.

“Tum dhobi ke bete ho, doctor banne ke khwab chor do (you are a washerman’s son, forget about becoming a doctor)”, was allegedly a repeated refrain of the teachers to Sushil, his father alleged in the complaint.

Commotion prevailed in the medical college after the father’s arrival from his home in Gorakhpur.

Fellow students demonstrated on the campus seeking action against the “guilty” teachers, even as bulk of the faculty members termed the charges against the teachers as “fabricated”.

“The accusations made against the teachers were absolutely baseless… after all there are so many Dalit students enrolled in the college every year and it is not the mentality of any teacher to run down anyone on account of his or her caste,” a senior professor said.

According to him, Sushil was a poor student and his father was aware of his poor academic record, so it was grossly unfair on his part to blame the teachers.

Another teacher noted that internal teachers only have the practical examination in their hands and the theory examinations are seen by external examiners and the copies are bar-coded, so there is no way that any internal faculty member can influence the marks awarded to a student.