KOMAL GUPTA raises a pertinent question for our times when the mobile smartphone is acquiring an all-purpose utility value…even while sitting for an exam!

• DO exam rules matter while the life of a student is worthless?
• Which side of this student suicide should we take seriously?
• What is the truth behind our education industry?
•Should suicide student’s mother seek help from social media?

TODAY’s society has changed dramatically and clearly the authorities who are must take cognisance of it! Take the case of Aditya Prabhu, the 19-year-old student who committed suicide on July 17, 2023 in Bengaluru. This case has created a huge uproar amongst the students community. Aditya was a CSE (computer science engineering) student at the PES college of Engineering in Bengaluru.
If we want to know what had really happened before Aditya taking his own life, we have two different reports to recount here. While we know that any story with two sides to it is difficult to judge in black and white nowadays, we must look at the facts and proof before punishing a student doing his exams. Let us check both sides and then decide.
According to the PES University, Aditya was caught cheating and copying during the examination. The invigilators reportedly caught him with a mobile phone around 11.30am, almost at the end of the examination. He was detained, counselled and parents were asked to come to the college. Awaiting his parents the student jumped off the 8th floor of the building.
“I want to tell our side of story”: an account on the social media site Instagram claiming to be Aditya Prabhu’s mother had something different to share. It states that Aditya had called her on the following day and said he had unintentionally taken a mobile phone into the hall, removed it and kept it to one side on discovering it. The mother’s allegation is that the college staff mentally harassed her son for being caught with the phone, “They told him it’s better to die than do such things.”

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLE
THE family mentioned in the following Instagram account that after Aditya’s passing, many other students reached to our on social media complaining about such incidents of mental torture happening to students just as in this case. Now Aditya’s mother has appealed to the government board to conduct a full-fledged enquiry into the functioning of the university. Because this is not only because of her son’s suicide but the fact that students are harassed if they are caught with the hand phones rightly or wrongly! Who decides what is okay and what is not okay?
She says this is happening all the time. As Aditya’s mother agreed to carry the mobile inside the examination hall, even when done unintentionally, was she in the wrong? In any case students don’t deserve the harassment which drives students to take such extreme steps…like her son did.
Says the heart-broken mother, “Education has become a business and protection of reputation of such institutions is the duty of everyone linked to such universities.” We do not see problems but solution of such problems and “right” action is taken immediately? “We are not even talking about justice delaying in other cases!”
This is to say cases like that of Aditya are adding up to thousands of similar cases pending, written in some files and left unnoticed. But we do have some tools through which we can involve people and make them aware of reality, let them give their support, share their experience and stories and that is “social media.” In one of the social media stories we hear about how teachers and staff treat students so arbitrarily and without any verification of facts.

SOCIAL MESSAGE
SAY one message: “Many forget that students might have engaged in malpractice but it is not a crime and so they should be treated accordingly. Now that the case has gone to the minister of Higher Education of Karnataka and the numbers of signatures in their petition is about to reach 30,000, they are surely going to get the conclusion for all of us. And justice for Aditya and his family.”
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) a total of 1,64,033 suicides were reported in the country during 2021, showing an increase of 7.2% in comparison to 2020, and the rate of suicides has increased by 6.2% during 2021 over 2020. Whereas, students and unemployed victims accounted for 8.0% (13,089 victims) and 8.4% (13,714 victims) of total
suicides, respectively.
Such an alarming situation needs proper proper introspection on every aspect of crime or suicide related to education. In a society where a student’s excellence defines honour of the family and college reputation defines the excellence of the institution, we should also make sure there is safety and understanding of students’ perspective as well. Surely this is the very least we may ask for? What was it that drove Aditya Prabhu to commit suicide like this? Please dig out the real dirt of our arrogant education business today.