Ragging drives medico to death

Chennai: A first year student of a private medical college in Kanchipuram district committed suicide in a hotel room Thursday night. While the boy,  Mukil Raj, left behind a  note saying he was taking his life as he had been a disappointment to  his parents,  his father, A.C. Murugan, an officer with the Krishnagiri collectorate,  lodged a police complaint, claiming he had been very depressed of late, possibly due to ragging.

Murugan and his wife Savithiri, a local panchayat chief  in Krishnagiri, said Mukil who had started  college only a few weeks ago,  was not very comfortable with its atmos­phere and the senior students and had seemed very depressed on his recent visit home.  Asserting that their son was not a weak person, they demanded a detailed inquiry into what had driven him to suicide.  Mukil was the third of the couple’s four sons.

In his note the boy, who consumed poison to kill himself, said “I never wanted to hurt anybody, particularly my parents. You struggled to make me a doctor, but I failed to fulfil your dreams. I have decided to end my life.” According to police sources, Mukil’s parents had paid a heavy capitation fee to admit him to the medical college.

Meanwhile, enraged students and family members held a demonstration before the Meenakshi Medical College, where he had studied, to protest his death and demand an inquiry into it.