A school teacher who lost her brother three years back has started a scholarship for students from financially deprived homes in his name.

The scholarship, Joydeep Roy Memorial Award, was handed over to 14-year-old Sudipa Kar, a student of Naoda Nayan Chandra Vidyapith in Howrah, on Sunday evening.

The Class IX student’s father, a farmer involved in betel leaf cultivation, suffered huge losses during Cyclone Amphan, which had struck south Bengal in May last year. The family had to survive on doles from organisations for months.

Sudipa will appear for Madhyamik next year and the scholarship will help her buy books and stationery.

Joydeep Roy passed away in April 2018 in Chamba in Uttarakhand, where he had shifted for work. He would have turned 33 on Sunday.

Roy’s mother Mitra Roy handed over the scholarship on his birthday.

“He completed MTech but was not getting a permanent job in Calcutta, so he had to move to Uttarakhand where he was teaching computer science in senior classes. He was a good student and the idea of giving scholarship is that students should not steer away from education because of lack of funds. I have the resources to help one student every year in my small way,” said sister Joeeta Basu, a teacher at St Xavier’s Collegiate School.

Basu started the scholarship in 2019.