Sugata Bhattacharya

A student of the Indian Statistical Institute who used to top his class hanged himself in his hostel room on Wednesday after studying through the night and playing table tennis before going to bed.

Sugata Bhattacharya, 18, left a suicide note in his shirt pocket that said he was ending his life “for no reason” except that he was “morose”.

The ongoing semester examinations at the institute was postponed to January because of the commotion caused by the tragedy.

The son of a senior public sector executive and a schoolteacher, Sugata was a popular student who not only excelled in academics but was also good in dramatics.

“The institute authorities contacted us after first-year classmates found Sugata’s room locked from inside. He wasn’t responding to calls on his cellphone either. A police team broke open the door around 9.30am and found him hanging from the ceiling. He was taken to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where doctors declared him dead,” the additional superintendent of police in Barrackpore, P.K. Tripathi, said.

Sugata’s friends said there was no reason for them to suspect he had suicide on his mind. Some of them were studying for the computer applications paper with him till around 1.30am. “After the joint study session ended, he played table tennis in the hostel’s common room till around 3am,” said an officer at Baranagar police station.

“We don’t know whether something that happened in the hostel drove him to suicide. He had topped his class in two recent examinations. We cannot believe he was depressed about anything,” said Sarbajit Bhattacharya, a cousin of Sugata.

Sugata’s father Debasish Bhattacharya is a training and development manager with the Indian Oil Corporation. Mother Aparna teaches in a Madhyamik school in Dhakuria. Family sources said Sugata’s body would remain in the RG Kar Hospital morgue till his elder brother Sambodhi, a second-year electronics engineering student in Kolaghat, returned to Calcutta after writing an examination on Thursday.