Death of a student

Inside IITBombay where students arrive after years of competing for a place among the countryrsquos brightest an examination has changed the conversation about student life On September 18 secondyear BTech student Sahil Wakode was allegedly caught using his phone during a midsemester examination The institute maintained that no disciplinary action had been initiated against him Hours later Wakode died by suicide in his hostel room IITB later retracted its statement saying it was inappropriate to characterise the circumstances of Wakodersquos death while the investigation was openWhat followed was chaos Students took to the campus in protest questioning the institutersquos handling of the incident its communication after Wakodersquos death and the pressures of life at IITBombay The protesters clarified that they did not support academic misconduct but wanted an investigation into greater institutional accountabilitySahil Wakode died by suicide on September 18 He left no note IITBombay claimed the incident took place after he was allegedly caught cheating in an exam on the same day Representational piciStockWakodersquos parents alleged that their son had faced castebased harassment for three months leading to an FIR under the SCST Act IITBombay denied the allegations Some students meanwhile have also rejected the caste discrimination claim Professor Suryanarayana Doolla who was named by the family was subsequently removed from his deanship amid the investigationBut the life of an IIT student is a complicated one After spending years as the smartest in the room arriving at a campus filled with toppers can mean constantly fighting for a place Then come the mental pressures from family of identity including caste relationships with professors and finding the best placement The question now remains mdash what is going on inside the campuses of these dream collegesRavindra Wakode left and Sonali Wakode right parents of Sahil Wakode PicPTIKaran Walia name changed remembers the evening through the sound of an ambulance It was around 7 pm and at IITBombay an ambulance outside one of the hostels ldquois very normal at a residential collegerdquo says the thirdyear student It was only later that he learnt a student had died by suicideWalia had spoken to Sahil Wakode a few times at the badminton court He remembers him as someone who was social and active mdash the sort of person whose death did not seem possible from the outsideProfessor Suryanarayana DoollaldquoSpeaking to the HOD I came to know that Wakode was counselled that no strict action will be taken against him In most cases of cheating professors do show mercy and give them a second chancerdquo Walia saysHe dismisses allegations against Professor Doolla on grounds of harassment ldquoI have spent a year under him Professor Doolla was very supportive and protective of the students Itrsquos a very wrong narrative being set outside that the faculty is against students And I donrsquot blame the parents here because they were emotionally driven from these protestsrdquoPolice personnel detain Youth Congress and National Studentsrsquo Union of India NSUI activists as they protest outside IITBombay PicPTIWalia points out that political outfits such as Student Federation of India SFI and All India Studentsrsquo Federation AISF are trained to use such incidents in their political favour He also speaks candidly about the academic pressures he believes students face at IIT ldquoIf I from General category score 200 marks for this branch for someone from SCST category if they score even 50 per cent of that they will get the same branch Now when these people come to IIT how can they compete with us since they have been scoring half the marksrdquo he says He adds that he does not know whether this contributed to Wakodersquos death saying ldquoThis could be a reason for him to take this step as wellrdquoWalia claims students had previously told him that Wakode had been caught cheating in exams twice during his first year though he says he cannot independently verify those accounts But he is uncomfortable with how Wakode is being spoken about after his death ldquoThe way people are talking about him is as if he did something bad to someone else Even when he is dead he is not being allowed to restrdquoThe debate around caste and reservation emerges again as many believe that the SCST Act has been misused Some believe Wakode should never have gotten reservation since he owned an iPhone confusing reservation to a povertyelevation program Ravi name changed a fifthyear Computer Science student at IIT Kharagpur argues what reservation is meant to address ldquoReservation is needed for a reasonrdquo says Ravi who is Dalit and grew up in Jaipur His own JEE Advanced ranks illustrate the gap in representation he says ldquoMy general rank was 6000 where my category rank was 140 You see out of 6000 students only 140 students from the Dalit community are in thererdquoGetting to IIT meant access to resources he could not have otherwise ldquoI didnrsquot have a laptop But now with labs I can learn coding and computingrdquo he says He is the first person in his family to study mathematics at this level and describes himself as a ldquofirstgeneration learnerrdquo Back home he says caste still shapes everyday life ldquoEven from my community they are not allowed to go into templesrdquo he says At village programmes ldquowe have separate spaces to eatrdquoIn India five out of six multidimensionally poor people are from lower tribes or castes This is in the 2021 report on poverty by the global Multidimensional Poverty Index MPI The Scheduled Tribe ST group accounts for 94 per cent of the population and is the poorest with 65 million of the 129 million people living in multidimensional poverty Then comes the Scheduled Caste SC group with 333 per cent 94 million of 283 million people and 272 per cent of the Other Backward Class OBC group 160 million of 588 million people who live in multidimensional povertyFor another engineering graduate from Government College of Engineering Amravati castebased comments was something he had been conditioned to Coming from a financially struggling family he grew up watching his father a painter face subtle discrimination ldquoWhen he would go for jobs some would try to figure out his caste by asking for his last name and then avoid him later on These things are common So there was a lot of pressure on me to take my family out of this situationrdquo he saysCollege brought a different version of this ldquoCasual casteism toh chalta hairdquo he says ldquoI made it a point to score high so that nobody would get a chance to comment on my quotardquo In his class of 80 around 1012 students had entered through reservation he recalls adding that many would still rank among the top 20 ldquoYou can say that I had to perform better and work harder for my marks as compared to those from the General categoryrdquoHeavy policing seen outside the IITBombay campus PicSayyed Sameer AbediPointing to pressure in colleges he says ldquoProfessors have a lot of power and sometimes they openly threaten someone they donrsquot like by saying lsquoI will ruin your academic yearrsquordquo He recalls a student suicide at his college that he says received little attention ldquoIt was on local news for a day but the college swept it under the rug Nothing happened after that which is concerningrdquo2026 IITB suicidesSahil Wakode and Naman Agarwal thinspWakodersquos was the third suicide on the IITBombay campus this year thinspNaman Agarwal The 21yearold BTech student died on February 4 leaving behind a handwritten suicide note in his room The police revealed that he was undergoing treatment for depression thinspSohil Rajkumar Sangwan A 20yearold a secondyear BTech student in Materials Science and Engineering was found dead in his hostel room on July 28 He left no note but the police did recover handwritten poems and writings on depressionlsquoPlacement pressure is realrsquoA friend of Sahil Wakode at IITB explains how family pressure for the best placement and competition are one of the major stressors in collegeA friend of Wakode and a fourthyear IITBombay student says ldquoIf you want to know why itrsquos tough to be a student at IITB I will answerrdquo There are he believes ldquo1500 of the smartest minds in one yearrdquo competing in the same space ldquoKeep them in one place and ask them to compete together no wonder there will be stressrdquoMuch of it is peerinduced ldquoEveryone at IITB is doing 100 different things at once You will always feel the need to do better or get oneuprdquo he says The pressure he adds has increasingly moved beyond academics Placements are ldquoone of the most realrdquo sources of anxiety ldquoStudents want the best job on day one People who have always been toppers also have egosrdquo With companies increasingly shifting towards internships and preplacement offers he says that pressure is now reaching younger batchesFamily expectations can add another layer ldquoFamilies look at certain fourcrore packages in the news and want you to do the samerdquo he says though such packages involve only ldquoone or two students out of 1500rdquoIronically he finds the coursework itself comparatively manageable ldquoIf you can crack JEE you can do well here The problem is that people stop studying once they come hererdquoWhatrsquos happening nowAccording to the preliminary findings of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch CCTV cameras recorded Wakodersquos movements inside the examination hall between 1230 pm and 1245 pm on September 18 Police said that with about 15 minutes remaining for the examination Wakode was seen bending down to look at something in his pocket Professor Doolla then questioned him and took him aside away from the other students according to the Crime BranchlsquoI stand with Prof DoollarsquoPolitical analyst Dibakar Dutta believes that the SCST Act has been misused in Sahil Wakodersquos suicide case alleging loopholes in the narrativeDibakar DuttaThe debate around Sahil Wakodersquos death has also spilled into the political space with political analyst and OpIndia assistant editor Dibakar Dutta publicly defending Professor Doolla In an Instagram post Dutta wrote ldquoI stand with Professor Suryanarayan Doolla I will not be a mute spectator to the brazen weaponisation of the lsquoSCST Actrsquo to settle scores with a professor who caught a student cheating in an examrdquoDuttarsquos argument centres on the timing of the allegations ldquoUntil the day of Wakodersquos death there was no complaint of any castebased discrimination against Professor Doolla either with the SCST cell of the institute or the administrationrdquo he saysHe questions the familyrsquos account of alleged harassment over three months ldquoWhere and how did Sahil communicate this information to his father Is this revelation in the form of written text or WhatsApp message or an unrecorded phone call which we canrsquot verify because Sahil is not in this mortal worldrdquoProtest on the IITB campus in support of Professor Suryanarayana Doolla PicPTIHe also asks why if the family was aware of the alleged harassment no complaint was made earlier ldquoWhy did Sahilrsquos parents not lodge a complaint with IITBombay or the police and instead chose to let their son suffer for three monthsrdquoldquoIt has made me realise how easy it is to weaponise a law which was originally intended to help the SCST communityrdquoDoollarsquos 2024 emailIITBombay had issued guidelines in July 2023 after one student Darshan Solanki died by suicide which was reiterated by Professor Suryanarayana Doolla ndash the then Dean of Student Affairs mdash in 2024 The email says ldquoIt is equally inappropriate for any person studentsstafffaculty members to ask other students about their JEE Advanced ranksGATE scores or any other information that may reveal the caste or other related aspects While the person asking the question may feel it is innocent and it may be driven purely by curiosity asking the question can often have an adverse impact on the other studentrdquoPiciStockGlobal and Indian suicide ratesAccording to data IITs shared with the Department of Higher Education in December 2025 54 per cent of the students who died by suicide between 2021 and 202425 came from SC ST OBC groups Across the country the National Crime Records Bureau has reported 123 lakh student suicides between 2014 and 2024 In the USA suicide is now the second leading cause of death for people aged 10ndash24 years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC Marginalised communities from the same age group are seeing an increase like Black youth suicide increasing by 78 per centpopcorn number123 L descStudent suicides between 2014 and 2024 in India classDefaultpopcorn number78 descIncrease in Black youth student suicides in the USA which sees suicide as the second leading cause of death in ages 1024 classDefaultlsquoHumiliation by facultyrsquoAnticaste activist Harsh Singh points to the systematic bias against marginalised communities among professors and masses at largeHarsh SinghFor anticaste activist and advocate Harsh Singh the reaction to Sahil Wakodersquos death reflects a larger ignorance about what reservation means and how caste operates beyond questions of moneyA Dalit from Meerut Uttar Pradesh Singh speaks in support of Wakodersquos parentsldquoThis is the history of IITBombayrdquo he says referring to the 2023 death of Dalit student Darshan Solanki ldquoWhenever something castebased takes place they try to undermine and deny it This is a pattern with the institute Nobody is speaking in favour of Wakode The faculty is taking a rally in support of just Professor Doolla So the bias is already thererdquoldquoItrsquos such an ignorant thing to think that the reservation programme is a poverty elevation onerdquo he says ldquoYou are humiliated by faculty and students on castebased issues whether you have an iPhone or notrdquo He argues that reservation is about representation not just povertyldquoThey are bothered by the mere presence of someone from a marginalised background Professors are not counselled on how to speak to someone from Dalit background If a student is using reservation they want him to look poor and be poor If he dresses well and has money then people cannot accept thatrdquoHe rejects statements made by IITBombay and the newly surfaced email by Professor Doolla from 2024 which spreads awareness on discrimination ldquoAnybody can deduce someonersquos caste from onersquos surname So it is not possible to outrightly say that nobody knows the caste of someone by just not asking their JEE rank Why then is it so that most suicide cases are of marginalised communitiesrdquoThe institute has also apologised for an earlier statement linking Wakode to the use of ChatGPT during the examinationWhat can professors doThe question of how professors speak to students is not new IIT Delhi director Rangan Banerjee stressed in 2024 the need for an inclusive environment that recognises the different pressures students bring with themIn an opinion piece on September 21 IIT faculty member Jaison Manjaly argued that faculty and studentaffairs teams need training to ldquorecognise distressrdquo understand bias protect confidentiality and respond without humiliating students A disciplinary encounter he wrote should begin with a ldquohumane conversationrdquo and explain the support available to the studentThe idea is to recognise that at an institution where students arrive carrying different social backgrounds and expectations the person on the other side of the desk may need more than a rulebooklsquoParental pressure is the biggest thingrsquoDr Paras Sharma a psychologist who has worked with college students says that a lot of parents donrsquot know the pressure they put on their childrenPiciStockldquoI dont think that the sources of stress begin at the big institutionsrdquo says doctor Paras Sharma a psychologist who has worked with college students including at IITBombay and VNIT Nagpur for over a decade now ldquoThe sources of the stresses are there right from when one is preparing to enter into these big institutions Stress is already there because you are already expecting that you should be able to crack these examsrdquoldquoSo many of the parents have mortgaged everything to send their children to just coaching You imagine the kind of pressure that the child has If something goes wrong or if you realise that you have fallen out with any of the authorities at the institution thatrsquos it Your life is ruinedrdquoOn top of all of these stressors comes the allpowerful weight of parental pressure ldquoI think parental pressure is one of the biggest things but I donrsquot think that a lot of the parents themselves know what it looks like to be in that system Even in the recent case the father has come out and said that Wakode was complaining of harassment for three months He told his son to bear it for two three more years and life will be set Parents are not perfect Many of them donrsquot know about lucrative careers outside of medicine and engineering Which worsens the pressure because parents think that those are the two most lucrative optionsrdquoSharma does not think the case will prompt any substantial change ldquoI am very sad to say but this is probably what is going to happen againrdquo he says ldquoTheyrsquore just going to appoint a bunch of counsellors on contractual posts or theyrsquore going to bring in a private provider on a contractual basis and they are going to wait for this to blow over and thatrsquos about itrdquoInputs by MT RizvilsquoThe brand IIT does not work anymorersquoDr ORS Rao an IIT alumnus states that the drop in placements is partly due to AI impacting technical IT job recruitmentsDr ORS RaoDr ORS Rao Chancellor of ICFAI University Sikkim and an IITMadras graduate explains how the changing placement landscape is also changing what an IIT degree can guarantee His paper Are Placements Dropping looks at how AI and shifting industry requirements are affecting recruitmentldquoWith AI now affecting IT jobs and technical jobs expectations of recruiting companies are changingrdquo he says pointing out that the impact is being felt by Indian as well as international companies ldquoThe average salaries of the toppers are going up but the problem is when you go to the midlevel students Those jobs are going down and salaries are not coming uprdquo For students entering the placement race depth in one technical skill may no longer be enough Students need capabilities AI cannot easily replicate like business acumenHis paper argues that India must also move beyond its traditional IT services model towards sectors such as electronics MedTech SpaceTech and DefenceTech It cites placement rates at top campuses such as IITBombay and IIT Delhi falling from historical highs of 85ndash90 per cent to roughly 70ndash75 per cent ldquoThe brand IIT alone does not work anymorerdquo Rao saysSuicide helplinesAsara 24x798204 66726Languages Hindi and EnglishSnehi 10 am to 10 pm93768 04102Languages English Hindi and Marathi