ARIYALUR: Tamil Nadu Plus-2 topper Anitha S., who had gone to the Supreme Court seeking an exemption for students like her in the state from Neet, hanged herself at her home after failing to make it to a medical college. Anitha, 17, who scored 1,176 out of 1,200 marks in Plus-2, breathed her last on Friday afternoon at her village in Kuzhumur.
Anitha, 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 based only on the score in Neet, where she scored 86 marks out of 720. Anitha 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 had lost her mother at a very young age; her father is a daily wage labourer and she was brought up by her paternal grandmother at their modest house, which even lacked a toilet.
Her family 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 encouraged by her calling her Dr Anitha,” a close relative told this newspaper. Immediately after news spread about Anitha’s death, her father and relatives of the deceased girl resorted to a road roko for some time at Senthurai near here.
They demanded that the state and Central governments take “moral responsibility” for her death. Activists blamed the Tamil Nadu and Central governments saying their “dilly-dallying” and “constant U-turns” on students getting exemption from Neet. The Tamil Nadu government had passed two legislations seeking exemption from Neet in February which were pending with the Centre.
