Guwahati, Sept. 18: An IIT Guwahati student hailing from Bihar's Supaul district was found dead near Brahmaputra Hostel on the institute's campus, with the preliminary probe suggesting suicide.

Assistant registrar (public relations) of IIT Guwahati, Labanu Konwar, said some students first saw the body of Ujjwal Shailabh (24) lying face down in a pool of blood near the four-storied hostel building around 11.30am. They informed the institute authorities, who immediately reported it to the police.

Shailabh was staying in a ground floor room of Brahmaputra Hostel.

The boy, a final-semester student of the BTech programme in mathematics and computing, hailed from Triveniganj town in Supaul district of Bihar, around 180km north of Patna.

Police suspect the student committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the hostel building. Officer-in-charge of North Guwahati police station M.M. Mahanta told The Telegraph that preliminary inquiry suggested he had committed suicide and further investigation is on.

Mahanta said that after speaking to students close to the boy, they learnt that Shailabh had been depressed for some days. This, Mahanta contended, could be the reason for him ending his life. The police have searched his hostel room but no suicide note has been found so far.

The post-mortem will be conducted tomorrow at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. Teams of the police, the Assam police dog squad, Forensic Science Laboratory in Guwahati, and the state CID visited the scene of the incident.

IIT assistant registrar Konwar said the boy's family members had been informed and they were expected to reach Guwahati tomorrow.

He said Shailabh joined IIT Guwahati in 2009 and lost a year as he could not appear in the exams on health grounds a couple of years ago.

This is the third suspected suicide by an IIT Guwahati student in the past two years.

A first-semester electronics and communication student, Tushad Yadav, had committed suicide on September 14, 2014. A second-semester student of MSc, Shoaib Ahmed, killed himself on March 11, 2014.

IIT Guwahati authorities have in the past been questioned about their capacity to counsel students given the suspected suicides and the depression that victims are believed to have suffered from. "We have four qualified psychologists to counsel students," Konwar said. "We earlier had one but increased the team to four after the two suspected suicides (before Shailabh)," Konwar said. "We also have third and fourth year students who volunteer to help juniors if they have problems, be they academic, family or other issues. We have also introduced this year courses in music and dance that students can take up as extra curricular activities. At least 70 students have already joined these courses."