IIT Madras BTech student dies by suicide on campus, fourth case this year

A second-year B Tech student of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras died by suicide in hostel room, police said on Friday. The student was a native of Madhya Pradesh. This is the fourth case of a student suicide reported this year from IIT Madras and the 12th since 2018.

"The body was taken for autopsy and a preliminary investigation is underway on the IIT Madras campus," said an officer of Chennai Police. Further details on the incident are awaited.

Earlier, on April 2, a PhD student of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, died by suicide in his room in Tamil Nadu's Velachery, police told media. The student was a native of West Bengal and was aged 32.

IIT Madras students had staged a protest seeking a probe into PhD scholar Sachin Kumar Jain’s death. Sachin was found hanging in the dining hall of his house in Velachery on March 31 after he put up a cryptic status on WhatsApp, saying, “I am sorry, not good enough.”

Sachin’s brother, Bhavesh Jain, sought a detailed inquiry and wrote to the director of IIT Madras, claiming that Sachin was disturbed with the way his guide was treating him.

Earlier this month, the father of an IIT-Bombay student, Darshan Solanki, who died by suicide, wrote a letter to the special investigation team (SIT) and requested it to probe the case from a caste discrimination angle.

In the letter, Darshan Solanki’s father Ramesh claims that his son faced harassment due to his caste while he was a student at IIT Bombay. The father has also demanded clone copies of his son's electronic devices be returned to the family.