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A high school student was found hanging at his house on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the exam results were out.

Stalin, 15, a class VIII student of Sarvodaya English High School, KR Puram, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the bedroom of his house on Venkateshwara Tent Road,
Devasandra, KR Puram. The police said the reason for the extreme step was yet to be ascertained.

Stalin was the only son of Sagayanathan, a field officer with a private mobile phone service provider and Mary, a teacher.

What happened

Sagayanathan went to the school, along with his son, to obtain the marks card. Stalin’s teachers told him he had scored very less marks in the exam, but had been promoted to the next class.

The school authorities advised Sagayanathan to instruct his son to study well as he would be appearing for public exams in Class X. Sagayanathan came to his wife’s school, along with Stalin, and is said to have taken her to task for not properly guiding their son with studies, herself being a teacher. He hired an auto and sent his son home, while he went to a petrol bunk, sources said.

Soon, he realised he had left office files and identity card with his son and rushed back home. There was no response when he knocked on the door. He grew suspicious and broke open the window panes of his bedroom and saw Stalin hanging from a ceiling fan.

“My son did not seem to be upset with the results. We never pressured him for better academic performance. Even the school staff never put pressure on him,” Sagayanathan told Deccan Herald.
School version

According to Ramesh,  the head master, Stalin scored 188 out of 625 marks in the exam. He got 11 in Kannada, 29 in English, 30 in Hindi,  36 in Maths, 30 in Science and 52 in Social Science.

“He was weak in academics, but was a very good boy. The staff held half-an-hour of extra classes for slow learners. But that had improved Stalin’s performance only by three to four per cent,” he said.
DH News Service

What psychiatrists say

Senior professor at Nimhans, Dr C R Chandrashekhar, said reasons in such cases could be anything. “Although he did not have any peer or parental pressure, the real reason can be found only after a psychological autopsy is conducted. The reason may surface if the parents and friends are questioned about the boy’s state of mind in the last few months,” he said. Many times, children are misled by the way media projects suicides.

They have curiosity, want to experiment and end up taking their lives, he said.
Timely counselling is required to prevent such incidents. If the child behaves in an abnormal way or stops talking much, parents should intervene and counsel. They should carefully observe their children weeks before the results are out and prepare them to accept whatever the results are, he added.