A medical student from Fudan University committed suicide in her dormitory on Friday, Monday's Shanghai Daily quoted university authorities as saying.

Wu Zhaolu, a Fudan spokesman, said police ruled out the possibility of murder and concluded that the 20-year-old took her own life.

"The victim, a Shanghai native, was a sophomore in the nursing department," Wu said in a telephone interview Sunday.

When the woman failed to attend her final exams on Friday, her classmates called the janitor of her dorm and asked her to search for the missing student, Shanghai Evening Post reported.

In Room 108, the custodian found the student dead on the floor with a fruit knife stabbed in her throat.

Covered in blood, the victim was already dead at the scene, the paper reported.

The motive behind the suicide still remained unclear, according to the university.

"She must have been in a morbid state of mind, which is not uncommon among college students," Wu said.

He attributed such a frame of mind to intense academic pressure from which many students suffer in an increasingly competitive environment. But it is difficult, he said, to prevent a suicidal person from taking her own life.

Teachers in the nursing department refused to talk to reporters yesterday but a school doorman told Shanghai Daily that campus life had returned to normal by Friday night.

"Students are busy preparing for their final examinations and do not seem to be influenced by the incident," said one student who refused to give his name, adding the victim's room has been sealed and her five roommates moved to another room.

(Shanghai Daily June 17, 2004)