Hyderabad: 19-yr-old’s family struggles to make sense of his suicide

HYDERABAD: The bulb outside 19-year-old Saheel’s house in Balaji Colony of Neredmet remained lit till Tuesday afternoon. The family had such a rough night, no one noticed.
Around 1.20 am on Tuesday, Saheel, an intermediate second-year student, shot himself with his father’s 12 bore DBBL gun at home.
“He was all right at night when I came back from office. We had dinner together. He seemed happy. Why did he do this?" said Meherdin, the boy’s father and a retired army sepoy.
Meherdin, who took voluntary retirement in 2014, worked as a gunman at an ATM money-loading company. He got the licensed gun in 2009, but only last year did Saheel request to be taught how to load a gun.
Saheel, the youngest in the family, aspired to become a software engineer and insisted he would repeat intermediate again after he failed mathematics last year. “I told him he could take up a degree course if he thought maths was difficult, but he wanted to become a software engineer, wear formals and go to office. He cleared the maths supplementary exam, but insisted he would repeat the year,” Meherdin told TOI.
Despite clearing all the subjects this year, he failed to clear Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains, for which he had been taking coaching at a private institute. Though the results were out on Monday night, Saheel kept it from his family. “While having dinner, I asked him about the results and he said it would come out only on Tuesday. He should have told us or his elder brother at least, instead he took the extreme step,” Saheel’s father rued.
Late at night, the family woke up to the sound of a gunshot. Neighbours who heard the commotion called the police. Saheel did not leave behind a suicide note, but it is suspected that he may have taken the extreme step after failing the JEE (Mains) exam.
The body was shifted to hospital and police have registered a case of unnatural death.