Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Frus­trat­ed with her prepa­ra­tion for up­com­ing ex­am­i­na­tions, a stu­dent from the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T, (Costaatt) com­mit­ted sui­cide by hang­ing her­self from a shed be­hind her home on Mon­day. Po­lice said Khadi­ja Dabideen, 19, of Samuel Coop­er Trace, Sixth Com­pa­ny, New Grant, was found dead by her fa­ther Kr­ish­na Dabideen around 9 am.

Dabideen's aunt Si­ta Jo­gie said her niece left a note in her di­ary ex­plain­ing that she could not cope with the stress of ex­ams. The teenag­er wrote that she was dis­ap­point­ed with her per­for­mance at the col­lege over the last se­mes­ter. Dabideen was train­ing to be a med­ical lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cian. Jo­gie de­scribed her as a with­drawn teenag­er who did not con­fide in any­one.

She said the girl start­ed suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion in the lead-up to ex­am­i­na­tions which start­ed at Costaatt on Mon­day. "She was re­al­ly down­hill. She was not bathing or eat­ing. She was not clean­ing her room. This was a pre-med­i­tat­ed sui­cide. She left sev­er­al notes in her room to her fa­ther, her moth­er and her broth­ers ex­plain­ing why she did not want to live," Jo­gie said.

She ex­plained that Dabideen's par­ents Kr­ish­na and Kamal­daye tried to cheer her up with ice-cream but her de­pres­sion con­tin­ued. On Sun­day, Kr­ish­na de­cid­ed to take his daugh­ter to a pri­vate doc­tor, but she re­fused. "She did not want to go. She locked her­self in her room," Jo­gie said.

Around 9 am on Mon­day, Kr­ish­na knocked on Dabideen's bed­room door but he did not get an an­swer. He said he lat­er heard the chick­ens cluck­ing in the yard and when he looked out he saw his daugh­ter hang­ing from a rope. "We don't know what hap­pened with her and why she had prob­lems cop­ing. She had so many op­por­tu­ni­ties. She got through to teach at Corinth and short­ly af­ter she start­ed, she dropped out," Jo­gie said.

She said she spoke to Dabideen at a fam­i­ly re­union two weeks ago and no­ticed that Dabideen was "very with­drawn." Po­lice said they have tak­en pos­ses­sion of Dabideen's di­ary. An au­top­sy was ex­pect­ed to be per­formed yes­ter­day at the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary. Of­fi­cials of Costaatt yes­ter­day of­fered con­do­lences to Dabideen's fam­i­ly and said coun­selling ser­vices are pro­vid­ed for her fel­low pupils.

"They are in­formed of this dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion and al­so via the Costaatt's Web site," the of­fi­cial said. Princes Town po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the sui­cide.