Protests erupt in TN a day after NEET petitioner Anitha commits suicide

Ariyalur: Lamenting the death of his ambitious daughter, father of 17-year-old Dalit girl Anitha who committed suicide in Tamil Nadu on Friday said she had managed to study in difficult circumstances.

"Anitha was concerned about NEET. What wrong had she done, who will answer," he said, reported ANI.

Members of Students' Federation of India in Tamil Nadu protested at Chennai's Mount Road on Saturday over Anitha's death.

Plus-2 topper Anitha’s dream of becoming a medical practitioner to serve the poor was brutally cut short on Friday when she hanged herself at her home in Ariyalur after failing to make it to a medical college due to the NEET fiasco.

The 17-year-old girl, who scored 1176/1200 marks in plus-2 and knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court seeking to exempt students from Tamil Nadu like her from appearing before NEET, breathed her last on Friday afternoon at her village in Kuzhumur.

Anitha S who hailed from a Dalit family, could not land in a medical college despite securing an impressive cut-off of 196.75 out of 200 since the counselling was conducted based only on the score in NEET, which she did not perform well due to lack of coaching. She had scored only 86 marks out of 700 in NEET.

The young girl pleaded before the Supreme Court through a lawyer that her plus-2 marks should be the sole criteria for getting admission into medical college.

Anitha’s impressive score in plus-2 did not come that easy. She had lost her mother at a very young age; her father is a daily wage labourer and was brought up by her paternal grand mother at their modest house, which even lacked basic sanitation facilities like a toilet.

Her family members said Anitha was upset ever since the medical counselling began last week and was not interacting with anyone.

“She was keeping to herself for more than a week. She always wanted to become a doctor and we too encouraged by her calling her Dr Anitha every time we used to address us. It is quite hard to believe that she is no more. We will miss her,” a close relative said.

Immediately after news spread about Anitha’s death, father and relatives of the deceased girl resorted to a road roko at Senthurai near Ariyalur. They demanded that the state and Central governments take “moral responsibility” for her death.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palanisamy on Friday exhorted students not to take ‘extreme steps’ of ending their life and promised to take care of students’ interests.

In a statement, Palanisamy also announced solatium of Rs 7 lakh for Anitha’s family and promised job for people from her family according to their educational qualification.

Actor Rajinikanth expressed his grief over the death of Anitha and conveyed his condolences to her family.