Coimbatore: A 21-year-old college student committed suicide after he had browsed the Internet and e-coached himself on “how to hang to death with a rope.” While following the steps to commit suicide in Coimbatore on Tuesday, he also sent photos of the noose to his friends on Whatsapp before committing suicide, the police said.

According to Saibaba colony police, V. Nikhilesh Bajpai, 21, son of Vijayakumar Bajpai from UP, was residing with his parents at the quarters of the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding on Cowley Brown road in the city.

He was studying final year B.Sc. Physics at an arts and science college on Avinashi road near Peelamedu. His father is a scientist at IFGTB. On Monday night, Nikhilesh was chatting with his parents at home and went to his room at around 11.30 pm.

On Tuesday morning, when Vijayakumar knocked at Nikhilesh’s bedroom door, he got no response.

Suspecting something was amiss, Vijayakumar, with the help of neighbours, broke open the door and found Nikhilesh hanging.

The Saibaba Colony police team recovered the body and sent it to Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital for postmortem.

Once the police started to investigate the incident, they were shocked to know that Nikhilesh had taken pictures of the noose and sent them to his friends through Whatsapp. He had then deleted all the photos from his mobile phone.

“We have seized his mobile phone and memory card and would collect the details of the snaps and investigate. But there was no foul play behind the suicide,” said Salairam Sakthivel, inspector, Saibaba colony.

The police recovered a suicide note from Nikhilesh’s room wherein he said that he was depressed as he was not interested in pursuing higher studies.