S Anitha wanted to become a doctor and had scored 1,176 marks out of 1,200 in Class XII. (File photo) S Anitha wanted to become a doctor and had scored 1,176 marks out of 1,200 in Class XII. (File photo)

Mourning the death of his daughter, the father of 17-year-old Dalit girl Anitha who committed suicide in Tamil Nadu on Friday said she had studied for the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) under extreme circumstances.

“Anitha managed to study in difficult circumstances. She was concerned about NEET. What wrong had she done, who will answer?”, news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

S Anitha was a petitioner in the Supreme Court against the implementation of NEET for admissions to medical courses in Tamil Nadu. She committed suicide by hanging herself at her home in Ariyalur district, near Trichy, nine days after the Supreme Court directed Tamil Nadu to follow NEET for admissions to medical courses and finish the counselling process by September 4.

Read – NEET petitioner Anitha’s suicide: Day later, protests erupt in Chennai

Anitha wanted to become a doctor and had scored 1,176 marks out of 1,200 in Class XII. She obtained 199.75 out of 200 for engineering and 196.75 for medicine, which would have ensured her a seat in either stream without NEET. However, her score in NEET was 86 per cent, according to her family. She had filed a petition in the court against the implementation of NEET, which was moved to be impleaded along with the state government in the Supreme Court plea. Anitha’s family said she had rejected an offer to join the aeronautical engineering course at the Madras Institute of Technology in order to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.

NEET was made mandatory last year for admission in medical and dental colleges across India. But Tamil Nadu has been against its implementation, arguing that it favours CBSE students over those under state boards. The state government had twice readied an ordinance for exemption, which was cleared by the Law and HRD ministries. However, the Union Health Ministry referred it back to attorney general K K Venugopal, while contending that if the state’s demand for exemption was accepted, other states will raise similar demands. Subsequently, the A-G revised his opinion, leading to the Supreme Court verdict on August 23.

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