Giving up: Teenage boy ends life after failing exams
A 15-year-old student, Farhad, committed suicide in the Sheikh Dheri area of Swabi after failing his school exams for the second time.
Farhad swallowed pesticides on Thursday and died on his way to the hospital. Funeral prayers were held on Friday.
“I was told that my son was fed-up with studies after he consecutively failed grade eight exams,” said the victim’s father, Muhammad Hassan. Hassan, a labourer working in Saudi Arabia, rushed to Pakistan after hearing about his son’s death.
He said that Farhad did not enjoy going to school but was forced to attend it by his family who hoped that Farhad would not become a blue-collar worker like his father.
Fida Muhammad, a local leader and close relative of the deceased, said that before committing suicide, the young boy went to school and distributed all his books among his peers saying that they might need them. He also told his classmates that he will not be attending school from now.
Muhammad added that the family has not yet filed a report on the case.
Girls’ school blown up
A government girls’ primary school was detonated by suspected militants in Shewa village of Swabi district.
According to the SHO at Kalu Khan police station, militants planted two bombs in tin canisters along the boundary wall, which blew up the school around 2:15am.
“Two class rooms and the boundary wall are completely destroyed by the impact of the blast,” said the SHO.
He added that the watchman of the school, Zahoor, was not present on duty and was sleeping in his house at the time of the explosion. He has been included in investigations.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 8th, 2012.
COMMENTS (5)
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In such cases we can t balm a single factor or person, actually the child committed suicide as he was tired from the continuous failure in exams, no one noted that what are the major causes of continuous failures, needed to identify those gaps and addressed with positive reinforcement, unfortunately in such gaps we negatively reenforce children and humiliating. The most important thing is that V are not aware of child rights, how to treat with children in family & school, We never notice the child problems, not listening him etching
Imran con -- when you have nothing constructive to say then I would suggest you dont say anything. How do you know what was going through that kids mind when he took that pesticide. He was just a child; who needed support and the system abandoned him. I hope I never have to read such a story again.
@ Imran con, Please don't blame the boy, he was in class 8 and not mature enough. His family and teachers should have taken care of him and helped him go through difficult times.. It proves that we as a society are insentative and careless to our children, women and elderly.
Maybe it's insensitive but, suicide just causes me to lose respect for the person to the extent that I can't sympathize even a little. The parents on the other hand... That's a little different pending on if they played a part. Yeah, he's 15 but, I can recall very clearly that I held the very same belief when I was that age. Before it as well. Basically whenever the topic came up as something I had to judge. No matter how bad something gets, it makes absolutely no sense. Someone at that point has absolutely no fear of death and appear to believe there's nothing to lose. Those two things combined can give someone the abandon to do many big things other people are intimidated by. I'm aware of the irrational aspect of the mental state making that difficult. Still, the things that push them to that point have a high probability of leading to such a concept. (if this ends up being a double, I fixed a small mistake I noticed too late. Not that there's a high chance of it going through unless the moderator agrees or there's some extremist content so they can't be accused of bias as of lately.)