Chennai: Superstars Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan on September 1 expressed anguish over the death of a 17 -year-old Dalit student from Tamil Nadu committed suicide earlier in the da.

S Anitha, the daughter of a daily wager, ended her life earlier in the day allegedly after failing to get admission to a medical college.

“My heart goes out to her for all the pain and agony she would have undergone,” said Rajinikanth in a tweet.

Haasan said, “This is a tragedy which should not have happened… our argument has probably been weak. We’ll have to better our argument and make our argument louder in court.”

Anitha had asked the Supreme Court not to insist on a common entrance exam for medical colleges. she,

She had scored 1,176 marks out of 1,200 in her board exams in Tamil Nadu, which would have allowed her to enroll to study to become a doctor, but did not perform well in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, commonly referred to as “NEET.”

Her family said she was found hanging, ndtv.com reported.

A year ago, the Supreme Court ordered all medical colleges across the country to use NEET to decide admissions. Tamil Nadu, which has close to 40 medical colleges, said its students are at a disadvantage while taking NEET.

The common exam, it alleged is more apt for students of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) schools and punishes poor and rural students who cannot afford the private tuition classes usually needed to score high on common entrance exams admission to medical and engineering colleges.

The top court exempted the state from NEET last year, but refused a request to continue the exemption this year.

The federal government said if the Tamil Nadu government were to issue an ordinance or executive order that would effectively circumvent NEET, it would back the move. But it said the opposite in the Supreme Court a weel ago, which then ordered Tamil Nadu to use NEET as its sole criterion for college admissions.

Anitha was from a village in Ariyalur district, around 300 km southwest of Chennai, the state capital.