Pune: 25-year-old student found hanging in FTII hostel room

PUNE: A 25-year-old third-year student of postgraduate diploma in acting, hailing from Nainital in Uttarakhand, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her hostel room at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) around 2.45pm on Thursday.
This is the second death of a student in the FTII hostel over the last one month. On August 4, a 32-year-old cinematography student was found dead in his hostel room. The police recovered his decomposing body. In Thursday’s case, senior inspector Murlidhar Karpe of Deccan Gymkhana police told TOI, “The woman was last seen by her friends and course mates on the campus on Wednesday.
She did not report to her classes on Thursday morning. One of the students then reached her room to check on her, but she did not respond to repeated knocks on the door. The security guards on the campus were then summoned and they broke open the door and found the student hanging from the ceiling fan. She had used a bedsheet.” Sayyid Rabeehashmi, FTII’s registrar, later released a statement, which said, “A student of the 2019 batch was found dead in her hostel room.
The FTII mourns the sad demise of the student. The matter is under investigation by the local police.” Karpe said, “An inquiry conducted at the FTII campus revealed that the woman was suffering from stress and she did not interact much with her classmates or hostel mates, nor did she reveal details of her problems to her colleagues and campus authorities. She was staying alone.” They conducted a search in her room, but did not find a suicide note, he added.
“We have given information of the incident to her mother, who is on her way to Pune. We have sent the victim’s body to Sassoon General Hospital for a postmortem and a report is awaited,” Karpe added. For now, they have registered the incident as an accidental death and will be recording statements of the students and others as part of their investigations to establish the cause of her death, he added.
The cinematography student, a resident of Goa, was also found hanging in his room. The police could not find any note from his room either. Rabeehashmi had said that he was a student of the 2017 batch of the cinematography course. Security officers from the FTII called up the police after they received reports that he was not opening the room despite repeated knocks, and the room was locked from the inside. When the police arrived and opened the door, they ascertained that he may have died some days ago.