A "lovely and kind" student police officer struggled with his workload, his former colleagues told an inquest today, Tuesday.

Anugrah Abraham, 21, known as Anu, was found dead in Radcliffe on March 4 last year.

Anu, from Whitefield, was on a placement with West Yorkshire Police (WYP) as part of a three-year apprenticeship degree at Leeds Trinity University.

An inquest into his death started last Monday at Rochdale Coroners' Court and evidence was heard today, Tuesday, from a number of officers who were in Anu’s team.

PC Courtney Shaw was Anu’s mentor for 10 weeks when he arrived at WYP and she worked very closely with him.

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She described Anu as “lovely and kind” and said he “felt like a brother to me, was always smiling and was nice to everyone”.

PC Shaw said she was not aware of Anu having any mental health struggles, and that when she found out about what had happened, it was a massive shock.

She only knew that he was struggling with the job, and he was having ideas that the job might not be for him.

Anu was the third person she mentored. But he was the first person she had mentored who was on a development plan.

PC Shaw thought that Anu being put on a development plan “wasn’t fair” as it “knocked his confidence”.

She said that although Anu would be forgetful sometimes and forget some of the processes they had to go through, she thought he was progressing saying “he really tried in those 10 weeks”.

PC Shaw said he was very good at speaking to people but had some issues with writing statements which could have been due to him suffering from dyslexia.

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PC Georgia Boyle gave evidence as she had been on the same course as Anu.

She said the workload was “challenging and stressful”, but she managed it quite well and had to do a lot in her own time to get it all completed.

She knew Anu fairly well as they worked on the same team for a brief time and they would speak about both having dyslexia.

PC Boyle said Anu “seemed embarrassed about having dyslexia”.

She also said that he mentioned that he wanted to leave the police and kept asking her if he was any good at the job as he felt like he wasn’t.

PC Boyle said: “I said to him not to be too hard on himself as he hadn’t been there long.

“He was a good officer when he could work at his own pace and was good at talking to people when he was relaxed.”

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PC Amir Saleem was also at Halifax when PC Boyle and Anu were there, however he did not do the university degree alongside the job.

He described Anu as “a really nice person” and having “a heart of gold”.

He also witnessed Anu struggling with the university and police workload, and would often overhear conversations from student officers feeling stressed.

In December 2022 and January 2023, team morale was low due to staffing issues and staff burnout and also that some of the sergeants were “unapproachable”.

PC Saleem approached an inspector about these issues.

The court heard this was not well received by the sergeants and lots of officers were upset with how they dealt with this during a team briefing.

PC Boyle said that team morale had been low since July 2022 because of staffing issues too.

PC Saleem said that Anu did say he was struggling and around Christmas 2022 they had a conversation about looking at other roles in the police.

He said Anu had “fears he was behind where he should have been”.

The inquest, which is being heard before Senior Coroner for Manchester North, Joanne Kearsley, continues.