“He was the best in class,” said Saurav Suman, Vinay’s junior at school and a fellow hosteller. Suman didn’t know Vinay well but was visibly disturbed by his death: “It just doesn’t make any sense why he took this step.”

The hostel houses students preparing for the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) through the training centre FIITJE.

Vinay ranked among the top 150 in the nationwide mock-examination papers, according to mathematics teacher and IIT coach P K Sharma from FIITJE. “It could not have been marks,” Sharma said. Instead, he blames Vinay’s interest in websites such as Life After Death and Dark Poetry, as revealed on his profile in online social networking site Orkut.

The day before Vinay hanged himself, he had gone to clarify some doubts with his English and Physics teachers at school. His English teacher Shamli Roy said: “He asked me if he was on the right track.” She was confused; after all, Vinay had scored 75 per cent in the pre-board English examination, which Roy told him was “a very good mark, easily around 80 per cent in the real thing — we’re more strict when we mark at school.”

Later the same afternoon, Vinay’s mother also met Roy to check he had spoken to the teacher. Roy reassured her, as she had done at last week’s Parent Teacher Association meeting, when “Vinay’s mother asked why he hadn’t done well in English”. Roy said: “Vinay was a magnetic personality. Never in my career have I seen such a brilliant boy.?”

Friends say Vinay never wanted to be an engineer, but pursued IIT-JEE due to pressure from the family. On his Orkut profile, he lists writing articles and reading novels as his passions. Roy said he started writing novels when he was in Class VIII.

As per protocol, officials from the Education Department visited Kalka Public School for statements from teachers. One issue raised was why counselling is not mandatory in private institutions such as FIITJEE. Sharma, who also heads FIITJEE’s south Delhi office, said: “What can we do for a child who doesn’t look stressed or worried, who’s performing incredibly?”

According to him, the entrance exam for a space at the centre filters out most, and counselling for people above certain intelligence levels won’t work. “Only the most brilliant students, who are not depressed, study here, their pressure is dealt with by helping them achieve their quest.”

No one knows why Vinay killed himself, and why does it matter now, asked his nextdoor neighbour at the hostel.