NIT-Patna boy dies by ‘suicide’, body found on rly tracks

Patna: Body of Prashant Pal (23), a third year computer science engineering student of National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna's Bihta campus, was found on railway tracks at Bihta at around 11pm on Saturday.The student, a resident of Shahjahanpur in UP and son of Hari Om Pal, had left the hostel premises on April 18 afternoon and did not return after that."The boy had left the hostel premises on April 18 afternoon on pretext of visiting a market, the reason that he mentioned in the hostel register, but never returned. It seems he died by suicide by coming under a train on the very same day," said Bihta SHO, Raj Kumar Pandey.His family members came to Patna on Sunday and returned with the body that was handed over to them after conducting the postmortem, said Pandey.Giving details of the incident, Pandey said he received a call from his sister on April 19 at around 8.30pm requesting him to find out the boy's whereabouts, as he was not responding to their calls. "And around the same time, a missing complaint about the student was filed by the NIT (Bihta) campus authorities. We reached the place to conduct searches in his room. But within an hour or so we again received a call from his family members that they received a phone call from GRP Bihta who had found Prashant's body on railway tracks," said Pandey. He also said that GRP Bihta had also filed a case in the matter.The SHO further said that the boy had written four-five emotional letters to each one of his family members. "The boy had written emotional letters for his family members, including mother, father, brother and sister, saying that they were very good but it was only him who has become a sort of burden for them due to his health issues," said Pandey, adding, the student was suffering from some health issues like asthma and he also used to perspire a lot.He also wrote that everyone in the family was worried because of him and he was not recovering due to which he had even stopped taking medicines."His friends said that Prashant was a very reserved boy and hardly mingled with anyone. He would always get emotional after receiving phone calls from his family members," said Pandey.College authorities did not speak on the issue. Dean students' welfare, NIT, Samarth Mukherjee said he didn't have the details about the event. Another teacher Prakash Chandra disconnected the call saying they would soon be issuing a press release in the matter and another teacher Shailesh Mani Pandey did not answer the call.