IIT-Madras woman professor commits suicide on campus

The deceased, Aditi Simha, was a Ph. D. scholar from Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. She was working as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics in IIT-Madras. She often visited her mother, who resides in Bengaluru, said the police.

Aditi spoke to her mother Neelima over phone around 11 am on Tuesday. As she did not answer the phone in the evening, Neelima called Aditi’s colleagues and asked them to check what had happened.

Aditi’s colleagues found her lying unconscious in her house around 8 pm and rushed her to the Apollo Hospitals on Greams Road. After examining her, doctors said that she consumed Abrus precatorius (Rosary Pea), which she could have picked from the campus. Around 4 am on Wednesday, she died without responding to treatment.

On information, the Kotturpuram police registered a case and sent her body to Government Royapettah Hospital for autopsy. After preliminary inquiry, police said that Aditi was married to a professor working in another IIT, but the couple had separated two years later. “She was living alone in Chennai for three years,” said police.

Police said that the body was handed over to her father, also a scientist, and the case has been forwarded to Revenue Divisional Officer for further investigation, as she committed suicide within five years of her marriage.

Police suspect that she could have committed suicide due to differences with the family members and are awaiting report from RDO for further investigation.