KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 21

An 18-year-old student of Grade XII who had fallen unconscious inside the hostel of a private college has been declared dead.

Sunil Sahani, a permanent resident of Gadimai Municipality in Rautahat district, is suspected to have died due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by gas geyser inside the bathroom.

Sahani used to stay in a hostel run by Bagbazaar-based Kathmandu Model College.

At around 3:30pm his friends and staffers of the hostel had broken down the locked bathroom to find the boy lying unconscious on the floor.

He was rushed to nearby Kathmandu Model Hospital, which shortly declared the boy dead. Superintendent of Police Dinesh Raj Mainali of Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu, said preliminary investigation showed that the boy died due to suffocation while he was taking a hot bath using the gas geyser.

'Early report shows the death was an accident, but we are investigating the case,' SP Mainali said. He further added that the truth could be ascertained only after the post-mortem.

The body had been taken for post-mortem.

Meanwhile, friends and kin of Sahani have staged a protest on the school premises for neglecting the safety of students in the hotel. They have been asking the college administration to take responsibility for Sahani's death.

Gas geysers, which are very popular in urban areas, are becoming a cause of bathroom deaths. Every year a number of deaths related to gas geyser are being reported.

A version of this article appears in the print on December 22, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.