'He told us about casteism, harassment': Parents of IIT Bombay student who died by suicide | India News

The parents of the second-year IIT Bombay student who died by suicide last week visited the Crime Branch office in Mumbai to review the progress of the investigation and demanded the immediate arrest of institute Director Shireesh Kedare and Professor Satyanarayana Doolla.They also reiterated their allegations that their son faced caste-based discrimination and harassment on campus before his death.“We have faith in the Crime Branch and the Constitution. We are only urging that the people responsible for my son’s death should be arrested immediately. Only then will he get justice,” the student’s mother, a teacher, told reporters outside the Crime Branch office.The Crime Branch recently took over the probe into the case after an FIR was registered by the Powai police under Section 108 (abetment of suicide) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and relevant sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.In his complaint, the student’s father alleged that Professor Doolla, acting under the direction of Kedare, repeatedly humiliated his son over his caste, threatened to implicate him in false disciplinary cases, and ultimately drove him to end his life.The student’s family reiterated their faith in the police and the Constitution, but urged immediate action against those responsible.“If you look at the history of suicides at IIT Bombay, several students belonged to reserved categories,” the mother said, alleging that her son faced systemic harassment and caste-based discrimination at the premier institute.The family also pushed back against the institute's allegations that Prof Doolla, a teacher of the deceased student, caught him cheating during an exam on Friday.“If the institute is saying that he copied, then they must prove it in the investigation. Initially, the institute alleged that he had copied and later there were allegations about the use of AI. The institute then apologised for its communication. This means there was something wrong with the allegation,” the father said, referring to the written apology issued by IIT-B for a statement it had issued on the circumstances surrounding the death and that it was not appropriate to have commented on the matter as it is under investigation.Soon after the suicide, the institute had said the student had been caught using a mobile phone to access ChatGPT during a mid-semester exam.The parents recalled meeting Sahil on campus the weekend before his death, when he allegedly spoke about facing caste-based slurs and torture. “He was a bright student. After securing admission to IIT Bombay and entering his second year, he started facing difficulties. When he told us that caste-based comments were being made against him and that he was being tortured, we should have brought him home. He might have been saved,” she said.The family said they had initially tried to encourage their son to continue his studies. “We told him that getting admission to IIT Bombay was not easy and tried to convince him to continue. But today, we feel that we should have taken his complaints more seriously,” she said. “My son was a bright student,” he said. (With inputs from PTI)