What prompted IIT-Madras project assistant Unnikrishnan Nair to end life – Times of India

CHENNAI: Homesickness and depression pushed the 22-year-old project assistant at IIT-Madras to self-immolate at the hockey ground on the institute campus on Thursday, police said, quoting from an 11-page suicide note recovered from near the charred body.
The deceased has been identified as Unnikrishnan Nair, a native of Ernakulam. After completing his master’s degree in his home town, he came to Chennai three months ago and joined IIT-M as a project assistant. He moved into a three-bedroom apartment at Velachery, which is close to the institute, along with Anil from Kerala, a doctoral student at IIT-M, and a man from Thanjavur.
Police said there were no CCTV cameras at the spot where his burned body was recovered, 200 metres from his office, but it was deemed a suicide as per circumstantial evidence and the note recovered from the spot.
The suicide note, which was in a largely ineligible scrawl, begins with the word ‘beware,’ said a police officer. It goes on to describe his lonely life in the city and saying that it was the first time he had stepped outside his house since his childhood. He also said that the decision to take his life was his own and that no one had influenced him, the officer said.
Inquiries by police revealed that Unnikrishnan was the youngest staff member in the department where he worked and that he had often spoken about feeling isolated at the office and his house. After talking to his parents, police said he had made a video call to his mother around 10.45am on Thursday. Then he went to his office. Later that evening, he doused his body with petrol, apparently carried in a bottle, before setting it ablaze. His mobile phone was fully burned in the incident.
After a postmortem was conducted at the Government Royapettah Hospital (GRH), the Kotturpuram police on Friday handed over Unnikrishnan’s body to his family. His father Ragu, a scientist with Isro, his mother, younger brother, who is a Class VII student, and other relatives later left with the body to Ernakulam to perform last rites.