Bengaluru: Parents of Aditya Prabhu and other PES University students, as well as students from other colleges in Bengaluru, held a protest on Sunday. They wanted justice for Aditya Prabhu, a 19-year-old PES University student who jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a building on July 17 after being caught with a cell phone in the exam hall.
Parents at the Freedom Park protest said that colleges are supposed to be a safe place for their children and a second home where they can learn and grow, but instead, these places are making their children’s lives unpleasant.
There were a few students from PES University, but most of the students were from other schools. But they wouldn’t say anything on the record.
“We don’t want money. What we want is a healthy setting in schools. Through this protest, we’re trying to set an example for other schools so that these kinds of things don’t happen again and no student feels like suicide is the only way out.
The protests wanted the university to name and remove all the people who were involved in the situation that led to Aditya’s death. Second, they asked the higher education department to set up a group to look into Aditya’s death in detail. They also said that the group should look into what happened in the past when similar things happened. Lastly, they asked the University Grants Commission (UGC) and all other relevant officials to change their policies so that the mental health of students is put first in these kinds of situations.
Aditya’s parents say that his professors told him that it would be better for him to die than to live. Aditya was a BTech computer science student. They also said that Aditya put his cell phone in his bag by accident and that it was in airplane mode. They said that when he realized it, he took it out and set it down; at this point, the security guard jumped on him.