May 16: A 20-year-old Patna boy - enrolled into the BSc statistics honours course at St Xavier's College, Calcutta - allegedly jumped to his death from the college hostel last night.
Police said Shoubhik Sinha - who was in the middle of the second-semester BSc exam and had written one of the papers on Tuesday - jumped from the seventh floor rooftop of the AJC Bose Road hostel around 9.10pm after dinner.
He had lost his father Abhijeet Sinha when he was three years old. His mother had almost single-handedly brought him up after that. This afternoon, she was standing outside the morgue at NRS Medical College and Hospital, Calcutta, weeping. "I had spoken to him on Tuesday and he said that he had written a good exam. There was nothing unusual about him and he did not seem upset to me," said Shobha Sinha. "He had two more papers left, on May 18 and 25," she added. Shoubhik was scheduled to return to his SBI Colony, Digha, home on May 26. Shoubhik's college and family members said he was a very good student. He had scored over 96 per cent in the CBSE Class XII. "He had no arrears (backlog subjects in the semester exam) and had no issues in terms of his classes. He was a quiet boy and kept to himself," said a source at St. Xavier's College.
Shoubhik had joined Xavier's after completing Class XII from St Michael's High School, Patna, where he used to live with his mother. "His mother had wanted to shift with him to Calcutta after he got through St Xavier's but he had said that he would live in the college hostel," said one of Shoubhik's uncles.
A police officer said they had gathered from some of his friends that he was upset at not being able to pursue engineering. With the rank he had secured in the Bengal JEE, he wouldn't have got admission into a reputable government engineering college.
In Calcutta, an officer of the Beniapukur police station said: "According to some of his classmates, he was a loner and seemed a little upset of late because of his financial incapability to pursue engineering.
"Till now it appears to be a case of suicide with no foul play involved. There was also no apparent trigger in the last few days that could have prompted him to end his life."
One of his uncles in Patna said he had chosen statistics at St Xavier's over engineering. "He had got through engineering in the private colleges in Calcutta but he said he would rather choose statistics honours at Xavier's because of the reputation of the college. He wanted to do masters after completing graduation," said his uncle Saurabh Nandan Ghosh.
According to the family, Shobha had called her son "several times" on Friday but he had not taken calls and his mother thought that he might be busy with his studies.
The police said they are examining his mobile phone to find out who all he had spoken with before the incident.
His Facebook account has photographs of him wicket keeping and also some with the bat. The IPL teams added in the account are Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab.
Some of the movies that he has added are Whiplash, Birdman and music of Kishore Kumar and Iron Maiden."Last night, I received a call from Somesh Sarkar, who is the local guardian of Shoubhik, that something was wrong with him. Somesh's wife Shantana is a sister of Shoubhik's mother and they live in an area near the EM Bypass area in Calcutta. Before I could understand anything, I received a call from a faculty member of the college who told me that Shoubhik was in a critical condition. Around 11pm, I got another call from one Raju Mandal, who identified himself as a police officer. He told me that Shoubhik had met with an accident and died. The cop did not mention as to what kind of an accident he was involved in though," Saurabh said.
Additional reporting by Joy Sengupta in Patna
