Joyottam Mallik, the second-year microbiology student who went missing on Wednesday, was found at Kamarkundu station, in Hooghly, early on Friday.

The Amherst Street resident was in a semi-conscious state when the Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel spotted him.

A doctor who attended to Joyottam said he had been suffering from dehydration.

Police said the 20-year-old youth had disappeared on his own as he was not prepared to sit for his college examination. “The test will start next week. He feared that he would not fare well and so ran away,” said Dinesh Mandal, the officer-in-charge of Kamarkundu GRP.

Joyottam left home on Wednesday afternoon for his tutorial class in Bagha Jatin. He disappeared after leaving the coaching class.

He told the police that he went to Howrah station from Bagha Jatin and boarded a long-distance train. “He could not recall the name of the station where he got off on Thursday morning. From there, he took a Howrah-bound train and reached Kamarkundu,” said an officer of Amherst Street.

Mandal said two GRP constables spotted Joyottam sitting on a bench with his head down. “He said he had not eaten anything in the past 14 hours. We took him to a doctor, gave him food and milk and informed his father,” the officer added.