UPSC aspirant commits suicide after he was denied entry to exam hall for being late

delhi

Updated: Jun 04, 2018 23:03 IST

After being turned away from a Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) examination centre for being four minutes late, 28-year-old Varun Subhash Chandran went home and hanged himself.

Chandran was originally from the town of Kumta in Karnataka and had been living in Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar for the past year. His father is a retired government officer.

On Sunday morning, Chandran was to appear for UPSC’s preliminary written exam. By mistake, he went to the wrong exam centre. When he reached the correct one, Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in Paharganj, it was 9.24am. The admit card issued by the UPSC says no candidate will be allowed entry to the examination hall after 9.20 and so, Chandran was turned away.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Chandran went home to his rented room in Rajinder Nagar. Police said one of his friends tried to contact him but he did not answer her calls. Worried, she went to the house but found it locked from inside. An officer said that Chandran’s friend then alerted the landlord and other friends. Police said they received a distress call from the landlord.

The police control room received information at 5.55 pm on Sunday evening. A police team came and broke down Chandran’s door, only to find him hanging from a ceiling fan in his room.

The body was taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital where Chandran was declared brought dead. The police inspected Chandran’s room and found a suicide note tucked in one of his notebooks. According to the police, Chandran wrote that he was committing suicide because he had been denied entry to the UPSC examination. He also apologised for failing his friends and family, and wrote, “The more you try to forget me, more happy my soul will be.”

HT tried to contact the UPSC spokesperson but he was unavailable for comment.

On Monday afternoon, Chandran’s sister and other relatives reached the city to take the body back home to Karnataka.

A Lancet report from 2012 said India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged 15 to 29. In 2017, government data showed a rising incidence of student suicides over the past three years. More than a quarter of the cases pointed at examination stress as the reason for committing suicide.