Bareilly: : A 25-year-old civil services aspirant, an IIT graduate, was found dead near a riverbank in Shahjahanpur, with a suicide note indicating he was under severe academic pressure.Abhinav Verma, a resident of Saiyyad Bara locality in Tilhar, had completed his engineering from IIT Mumbai around two years ago. Despite opportunities for a high-paying corporate job, he chose to prepare for the civil services, aiming for what he considered a “higher” goal.Bareilly DIG Ajay Kumar Sahani told TOI that a two-page suicide note recovered from his room revealed his inner turmoil. Abhinav wrote that he “could no longer bear the burden of studies and urged others to become a farmer or gardener if needed, but never take unnecessary academic pressure”. He also advised his brother to work hard without succumbing to show-off or stress, and asked people to define success on their own terms rather than chasing societal benchmarks.For the past two years, he had been studying through online coaching and was expected to appear for the examination next year. According to police and family members, Abhinav spoke to his younger brother Ayushman, a NEET aspirant in Kota, on a call around 9.30 am on Wednesday, advising him to focus on studies but “avoid unnecessary pressure and societal expectations”. Around 10 minutes later, he left home without informing anyone.When his parents — father Rakesh Verma, a gram vikas adhikari, and mother Meenakshi, a govt school teacher — returned home, they found his phone and wallet inside and initially assumed he had stepped out briefly. When he did not return till evening, the family began searching for him and later lodged a missing complaint. His body was later found near a bridge over the Garra River, police said.The DIG said, “A postmortem was conducted, and the cause of death was found to be drowning. The family didn’t allege any foul play.”
