Sussex student Rajiv Aryal took his own life day after exam results were released, inquest reveals

Sussex student Rajiv Aryal took his own life on July 13th of this year, the day after his exam results were released. The inquest into his death has revealed he had become increasingly anxious and began to feel nervous about his results leading up to his death.

Fellow student and friend, Connor Wakefield, decided to go to Rajiv's house on Halland Road after not hearing from him all day. After failing to enter the locked front door, Connor was able to enter the back of his house through some sliding doors.

After getting into the house he turned on some lights and found Rajiv at around 9:40pm. The inquest heard Connor immediately dialled 999, the emergency services arrived within minutes.

Doctors concluded that Rajiv had been dead for quite some time and that upon the arrival of he police there were no signs of any suspicious behaviour.

A postmortem revealed Rajiv was as a "healthy young man" with "no signs of alcohol in his system" at the time of his death.

Assistant East Sussex Coroner, Catherine Palmer, stated in court that the "high levels of anxiety" felt by Rajiv was a potential contributing factor to his suicide. She then told the court he had purposefully waited until his other housemates had left before taking his own life without exterior intervention.

Ellen Robinson, girlfriend of Rajiv, described her boyfriend as "such a hard-working student" but she made it clear that his obsession with studying resulted in Rajiv becoming "upset when he didn't do well in his studies".

Ellen noticed that leading up to his death, Rajiv was "a lot more anxious than normal" and continuously "put a lot of pressure on himself".

Another influence of Rajiv's growing pressure was financial, his girlfriend said how he had "gone quite far into his overdraft". His father Laxmi Aryal had given him some money to support him but told the court "I don't ever think he planned to take his own life."

Mr Aryal continued to tell the court how his son experienced "low moods" in 2015 but to him they seemed to disappear these last few years. Rajiv's father said that he did not ever believe his son was going to take his own life that that "it would end like this."

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