KALYANI: A meritorious student from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) was found hanging from the ceiling of the Kalyani campus's hostel washroom on Monday. Sagar Mandal was from the Scheduled Castes and came from a village 6km from the premier central institute. A section of the faculty as well as his friends said the son of a mason was undergoing treatment for hypertension and was "suffering from inferiority complex and a problem of low grades because of lack of proficiency in English". His family alleged he was being "pushed into taking drugs".Haringhata cops on Tuesday registered a murder case against unknown people following a complaint from the headmaster of Fatehpur High School, where Sagar studied till Class XII. Earlier on Tuesday, neighbours of the first-generation college-goer blocked the Boro Jaguli-Nagar Ukhra Road crossing.Institute authorities, however, denied there was any drugs or ragging problem on the campus. "There is no way he could be a victim of ragging or peer pressure to take drugs. The institute is very strict in such matters. There has been no complaint of anyone being forced into drugs. It's also unlikely that his academic performance might have prompted him to commit suicide . We have formed a fact-finding committee to look into what exactly caused the incident," IISER-Kolkata dean Arindam Kundagrahi said.Sagar was found hanging on Monday afternoon inside the second-floor washroom of the Nivedita Hall, the hostel where he stayed with two others as roommates. His friends said he studied till late into the night on Sunday and left his room around 2 a.m. on Monday. The others at the hostel assumed that he had gone to the 24-hour-open library and continued with their studies. His absence was noted only on Monday, when he did not appear for the Earth Science paper in college. A search on the campus led to his body a couple of hours later."He was a bright student but his grades dropped in the first semester of the second year. He scored very low grades in Earth Science's Seismology paper. He was supposed to write another Earth Science paper (on Geophysics)," an M.Sc student of the institute said. "We all knew he wasn't very comfortable with English and these papers needed long-ish answers. Had he failed in Earth Science this semester, he would have lost his scholarship for a year," the M.Sc student said.Sagar evidently realised this; he called up a friend on Sunday night and expressed fears that he might not pass Earth Science this semester.Sagar scored a grade of 7.78 in his first year second semester but his grade dropped to 7.46 in the first semester of the second year, the dip coming with a very low grade in Earth Science. "There was no reason why a student of Sagar's merit could have found one subject so difficult. It was his problem with English that troubled him in papers that needed more explanatory writing," said a student of B.Sc second year.Sagar's family and neighbours broke down when his body was released after an autopsy. "He could not have committed suicide, he was a fighter," his father, Sushanta, said as the body was placed on a ground in front of the family home at Fatehpur's Majherpara. Sagar's sister, Rekha, claimed that he was being pushed into drugs by some of his friends. He kept on refusing but the pressure on him was growing, she said.WhatsApp messages that Sagar sent his friends, which TOI accessed, revealed that he had gone to Vellore to get treated for hypertension.

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