Bhubaneswar: The body a 21-year-old MBBS student of Hi-Tech Medical College was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday morning. The college authorities suspected that Nihar Ranjan Rout of Soro in Balasore, committed suicide due to poor results.

But Rout's family members alleged that the institute was pressurising him into paying pending course fee.

Mancheswar police said Rout, a third-year MBBS student, had locked himself in his room on Saturday evening. His friends did not get any response after knocking on his door. Later, they found Rout hanging from the ceiling fan through the window. The door was then broke open and Rout was rushed to the intensive care unit of the medical college-cum-hospital where he was declared received dead.

"Last week, the institute had sent Rout a letter demanding immediate payment of Rs 8 lakh towards pending course fee. Since then, he was under tremendous stress. They had also threatened not to allow him to appear in the next examination if the fee was not deposited before that. We suspect that this might have pressurised him to take the extreme step," alleged Rout's uncle Ramakanta Swain.

He also alleged that the institute did not inform them about the suicide and that they came to know about the incident through his friends.

The institute authorities denied the allegations and said that Rout was not faring well in exams and was not attending classes regularly either. "The institute never demanded money though he did not clear course fees for the last 18 months. He continued to stay in the hostel and we have not even debarred him from attending classes. He might have taken the drastic step as his academic performance was not satisfactory," said chief executive officer of Hi-Tech Medical College and Hospital Bhisma Rath.

Police commissioner Y.B. Khurania said they were probing the case. "We will also verify the claims made by the relatives of the deceased," he said.

On April 9, a third-year nursing student of the same institute had tried to kill herself by jumping off the roof of her three-storey hostel allegedly after the college authorities did not act on her complaint of being molested by a canteen staff member. The police had later arrested a canteen staff of the medical college for molesting the girl.