San Francisco: The body of Indian student Saketh Sreenivasaiah (22), who went missing in the US on February 9, was fished out from Lake Anza in California on Saturday afternoon (local time) by the local police.
The tragic death of the student has put the spotlight on mental health issues in campus, particularly among those living far from their families. Sreenivasaiah, from Karnataka, was a post-graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.
His roommate Baneet Singh said in a LinkedIn post that Sreenivasaiah died by suicide, as per Hindustan Times. In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, Sreenivasaiah had been eating less and acting more and more indifferent, Singh said.
“My Berkeley roommate, Saketh Sreenivasaiah, has been found dead by suicide in lake Anza near the Berkeley hills, according to police… the entire community has been shocked to the core,” Singh said in his post. He is working with authorities to fly Sreenivasaiah’s family from India to the US on an emergency visa, he added.
Singh went on to ruminate on life as an international student, saying that it can be tough. In the two weeks before he disappeared on February 9, Saketh Sreenivasaiah had been eating less and becoming more withdrawn, he claimed.
“There were no signs of anything until the last 2 weeks, when he started eating less and engaging less, only surviving on chips and cookies,” Singh posted.
Sreenivasaiah apparently invited him to Lake Anza on January 21, but he declined, feeling too lazy. “Little did I know that would be the same place he’d take his life,” he wrote.
Singh said that his last conversation with Sreenivasaiah occurred after the Indian student – a BTech from IIT Madras – returned from class wearing a red bathrobe.
“I asked him ‘why are you wearing a robe to class’, with a smirk on my face,” Singh wrote.
“He said, ‘I’ve stopped caring man. I’m cold and don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I don’t care about anything.'”
Singh laughed off the comment at that time. However, he now says it was indicative of Sreenivasaiah’s mental health.
“Now I know that he really meant it. The opposite of life was never death, it was indifference. To stop caring. Which led to him not caring for his own life, either,” he concluded.
