Japanese student commits suicide at IIT Guwahati

Guwahati: A student from Japan committed suicide at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IITG) on Thursday.

The deceased, Kota Onoda, hails from Japan and was in IITG on an exchange programme for three month from Gifu University at Japan.

"Onoda arrived in our institution during mid August. He was supposed to return to his parent university on November 30 after completion of the exchange programme," IITG Public Relations Officer, Labanu Konwar told IANS on Thursday.

He said that the incident took place between 3pm to 3:30pm.

"He was staying in Lohit hostel of the IITG. His friends saw the room locked and called him. As there was no response from inside, they informed the IITG authorities. The IITG authorities with the help of police broke the door open and found him hanging from the ventilator in the bathroom," Konwar said.

The deceased was a student of the department of Biosciences & Bioengineering at the IIT-Guwahati.

The IITG authorities have informed the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) about the tragedy so that the family in the deceased's home country can be intimated about the tragedy.

Established in 1994 at North Guwahati on the banks of mighty river Brahmaputra, the IITG is one of the prestigious technical institutions in the country. The premiere technical institution is however, witnessing several suicides in the past few years.

On January 7 this year, a B.Tech 4th Semester student from Andhra Pradesh committed suicide in the IITG.