Swapnadeep Kundu, the 18-year-old first-year-student at Jadavpur University who is suspected to have jumped to his death late on Wednesday, had left the Bengali department of Shri Krishna College in Bogula — a stone’s throw from his home in Nadia’s Hanshkhali — to study at his dream institution more than 100km away.
“He was so excited when his name appeared on the merit list of Jadavpur University. He immediately decided to quit the college in Bogula, where he had started attending classes. For him, the name of the institution mattered most. It was like dream come true,” Swapnadeep’s mother Swapna told The Telegraph on Thursday.
The 18-year-old is suspected to have jumped to his death from the second floor of Jadavpur University Main Hostel on Prince Gulam Hussain Shah Road.
Around two hours before that, Swapnadeep had called his mother and said he was “very scared” and requested her to take her back home.
The family was informed about his fall from the building early on Thursday. A few hours later, he died in a city hospital.
Swapna, an accredited social health activist (ASHA worker), has been losing consciousness since hearing the news of the death of her elder son.
Swapnadeep’s father Ramprasad Kundu works in a cooperative bank near home.
His family members said Swapnadeep, who went to Bogula High School, had scored 78 per cent in the higher secondary examinations in the science stream.
“Swapnadeep wanted to study computer science at the undergraduate level. But his marks were not adequate. He had applied to many colleges but failed get a berth in
the subject. His second choice was Bengali because of his flair for writing. He enrolled in the Bengali department of Bogula’s Shri Krishna College. But he was unhappy as he had always dreamt to study at a prestigious institution,” a family friend said.
Swapnadeep’s “dream” came true when his name appeared on the
merit list of Jadavpur University.
“He immediately left the college in Bogula and enrolled at JU on August 3,” his mother
said.
“We were happy because he was so happy to have got an opportunity to study Bengali literature at JU,” his mother said.
Utpal Biswas, headmaster of the school where Swapnadeep studied, said the boy could “never bring embarrassment to any institute”.
“I had seen him since 2011. He was soft-spoken and polite. There was no way he could bring embarrassment to the institute,” Biswas said.
The Telegraph spoke to Swapnadeep’s one-time private tutor Amit Roy, who now stays in north Bengal.
“After the higher secondary results were announced, Swapnadeep was a little down as he was not getting admission to study a science subject. I advised him to prepare for the joint entrance examinations and NIIT. He never told me that he was enrolling in an arts department at Jadavpur University. Had I known this, I would have strongly recommended against it,” Roy said.
Swapnadeep’s younger brother Ratnadeep is a Class X student.