IIT Kanpur mulls steps to prevent student suicides

LUCKNOW - Alarmed by a spate of on-campus suicides, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur is toying with the idea of restricting round-the-clock internet access, which it says is one of the main causes of these suicides.

“Students spending the whole night surfing the internet often fail to do well because they either miss classes or are too mentally fatigued to understand what is going on in class. Their failure to keep pace with their studies led to the suicides,” a senior faculty member told IANS Monday.

However, the decision to shut down internet services after midnight in the Wi-Fi enabled campus can only be taken after being cleared by the IIT senate, institute registrar S.S. Kashalkar said.

The country’s premier engineering school has witnessed as many as eight suicides over the past five years.

The most recent case was of 21-year old B.Tech final year student Madhuri Sale, who hanged herself in her hostel room Nov 17.