By Ravik Bhattacharya and Raajnandini Mukherjee
A 25-YEAR-OLD PhD scholar at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), in Kalyani, Nadia, died during treatment at a hospital hours after he allegedly attempted suicide on the college premises on Thursday evening. Earlier that day, he had levelled allegations of ragging and apathy by the institute administration in a social media post.
“I was never made for this world… But I can’t do this anymore. I give up. May I find the peace in death that I never found in life,” read a note posted by the student — Anamitra Roy — online.
According to the police, Roy, a resident of Shyamnagar in North 24 Parganas and a PhD student of biology, was found unconscious in a laboratory at the IISER on Thursday evening. He was taken to AIIMS, Kalyani, where he died on Friday morning.
According to sources in the police, he apparently consumed a poisonous substance.
“We got information about a social media post in which a student declared that he was going to die by suicide. Our team rushed to IISER. But we were told that the student has been admitted to AIIMS Kalyani. Initially, he was stable but he died on Friday. We have registered an unnatural death case. The post-mortem report is awaited,” Superintendent of Ranaghat Police district, Aashish Maurya, told The Indian Express.
“Since there is a social media post alleging ragging, we have reached out to his (Roy’s) family members and the IISER authorities. However, a formal complaint is yet to be received,” said Maurya.
In an online post earlier on Thursday, Roy detailed how he has been dealing with depression and considered suicide from a young age and only recently found out that he was autistic.
In a statement issued on Friday, the IISER said, “With deep sadness and grief, we announce the untimely and tragic demise of our PhD student Mr Anamitra Roy on August 8, 2025, at AIIMS, Kalyani. We are all in mourning for the passing of a member of our community, who by all apparent markers was doing quite well in academics and was actively engaged with the larger community. We offer our sincere condolences to his immediate family, his friends, and his well-wishers.”
“As a community… We resolve to examine and improve our systems of checks and balances to ensure that we are able to identify and stop such incidents in the future. In the meantime, we request all to give us the space to grieve and heal, and stand strong with his family and more importantly, allow us to handle the situation without any uninformed, external influences. In Anamitra Roy, we lost a dynamic student. His loss is an invaluable loss to the entire scientific community,” the statement added.