Mumbai:
Things went terribly wrong for a 15-year-old student, who attempted to re-enact a suicide scene for the benefit of his younger brother and ended up accidentally hanging himself with his mother's dupatta at his home in Vile Parle on Monday night.
According to schoolmates and the police, Aakash Gupta, who was a Std IX student at a school in Vile Parle, had a keen interest in crime stories and stunts he saw on television, and would attempt to re-enact such scenes whenever he had an audience. Aakash lived with his parents, who run a chaat stall nearby, and younger brother 12-year-old Vishal at Sanjay Gandhi Nagar in Vile Parle (East).
On his way back from school at around 6 pm on Monday, Aakash met his father Virender Gupta as usual at the chaat stall.
Virender said, "He was very happy. He regularly took a plate of bhelpuri or sevpuri from me and went home."
The teen returned home to the family's house, changed into his home clothes and went upstairs to play with his sibling. At around 9 pm, Vishal witnessed Aakash tying his mother's dupatta to the ceiling and standing on a small round plastic container to show him how a suicide scene looks. Fearing something bad was going to happen, Vishal went downstairs and informed his mother, but she was busy cooking and did not check on Aakash. She went upstairs around half-an-hour later and was shocked to see Aakash hanging.
Her screams alarmed the neighbours and Aakash was rushed to a local hospital, where he was declared dead.
The police were informed and the body was sent for post-mortem the same night, after which it was handed over to the parents yesterday morning.
Senior Inspector Shashikant Talegaonkar of the Vile Parle police station said, "There is no reason for the boy to commit suicide. He just wanted to enact it. We have registered an Accidental Death Report in this regard." Talegaonkar added that Aakash had stood on a small plastic container, and since the dupatta was not tied properly, his foot may have slipped, causing him to hang. Virender said that his son was brilliant at his studies as well as in sports.
"He was a very active child. Two days ago he and his brother went to Juhu and he was full of life. This has to be an accident," he said.