Prevention, Intervention and Accountability: The Sahil Wakode Case Again Raises Questions on Belonging and Dignity

Sahil Wakode, a second-year student at IIT Bombay, died by suicide in his hostel room on September 18. In its initial statement, IIT Bombay said that Sahil was caught using a mobile phone during an examination. The institute’s first statement placed considerable emphasis on the examination incident and the uninvestigated allegation that Sahil had cheated.

IIT Bombay further stated that it took no disciplinary action against him and that the concerned faculty counselled him. However, later IIT Bombay acknowledged that it had inappropriately issued a detailed statement about the circumstances surrounding Sahil’s death and apologised for its earlier communication. 

Sahil’s parents alleged that he was facing caste discrimination and harassment for the last three months and therefore, an FIR was registered against Professor Suryanarayana Doolla under the provisions of abetment to suicide and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The allegations remain under investigation, and IIT Bombay has denied the caste discrimination allegations, saying Sahil filed no complaint with its SC/ST Cell or administration. 

Over the next three days, students continued their protest. This is now the third reported suicide at IIT Bombay in 2026. Their demands went further than just the exam incident. They sought an inquiry into Sahil’s death, accountability from the administration, action against Doolla, and significant changes in how the institute addresses student welfare and institutional grievances.

On Monday, September 21, IIT Bombay suspended Doolla from his position as dean of administrative affairs. However, the students continued calling for his suspension as a professor. 

And yet, while the investigation is still ongoing, another narrative is taking hold regarding Sahil’s death that students who enter elite institutions through reservation are unable to cope with the academic demands of those institutions. This framing also reflects a familiar caste-based assumption that a student from a reserved category who struggles in an elite institution is struggling because they were never academically deserving rather than examining the institutional environment in which the student was studying.

A death cannot be reduced to the last incident

After every student's suicide, people often look at a single reason, but this cannot be explained through one isolated event. It is a product of several factors building up over time; that can be academic pressure, caste-based discrimination, financial stress, and harassment, where discrimination and inadequate institutional support can aggravate a student’s sense of alienation. 

Caste-based discrimination is a pattern; it can be the same joke about reservations, it can be whether a student is a reservation entry, it can be assumptions about academic ability, social exclusion, humiliation in classrooms, differential treatment by teachers, being treated as intellectually inferior, hostility toward Ambedkarite or anti-caste expression, or just making someone feel that their presence in an institution is conditional. 

Also read: After Four Deaths by Suicide in a Year, IIT Bombay Must Face Accountability

Rakesh Kumar Maurya’s qualitative research on Dalit students in higher education drew attention to the severe realities they encounter, such as caste-based prejudice, humiliation, and exclusion. These difficulties arise at several levels, affecting interactions not only with fellow students but also with faculty and the administration. It highlighted both the blatant and the more subtle forms of discrimination that exist. This matters because the last incident may simply become the point at which accumulated humiliation, isolation, fear, and hopelessness become unbearable.

'There was no complaint'

In Sahil's case, IIT Bombay's SC/ST Cell stated that no complaint regarding caste discrimination had been lodged by him. IIT Bombay has also maintained that caste information is protected and that there was no caste discrimination in this case. This is not new. The Thorat Committee, set up by the Government of India in 2006 and reporting in 2007 on caste discrimination at AIIMS, found rampant differential treatment of SC/ST students in evaluation, mess access, and everyday interaction and, notably, also documented discrimination experienced by SC and ST faculty at the same institute.

But the absence of a formal complaint is not necessarily proof of the absence of discrimination. A student who is dependent on the same institution for grades, scholarships, hostel accommodation, recommendations, examinations and future opportunities may reasonably fear what will happen after making a complaint.

The UGC's 2012 Promotion of Equity framework requires higher educational institutions to raise awareness about caste discrimination, implement constitutional protections for SC/ST students and make their anti-discrimination measures public. It also allows students or parents to file complaints with an Anti-Discrimination Officer and requires institutions to make their complaint procedure transparent. Even when a student is inclined to voice a grievance, the framework for resolution is limited.

In the majority of educational institutions, an SC/ST Cell is available to address complaints. Ultimately, the authority to make final decisions generally resides with the principal or director, the very office that is often the target of complaints from the faculty hierarchy. For a dissatisfied student, the only alternative is to contact an ombudsperson appointed by the university, instead of seeking recourse from an independent external body.

This has recently been weakened rather than strengthened. In 2023, the UGC replaced this with a general Student Grievance Redressal Committee (SGRC) that folds caste-discrimination complaints in alongside fee disputes and exam delays, with only one seat guaranteed to an SC/ST/OBC member. This has been publicly criticised as a dilution. 

Also read: Sahil Wakode and the Verdict That Came Before the Investigation

An SC/ST Cell can exist as a symbol of institutional inclusion while the deeper grammar of the institution is: whose authority is treated as default, and who occupies the deanships and directorships that actually decide outcomes? Formal representation alone does not ensure meaningful power sharing. 

Further, the reluctance among SC/ST faculty to visibly advocate through an SC/ST Cell is well documented beyond individual experience. Roundtable India has described Dalit faculty as operating in a “restraining mode,” whereby support for marginalised students may be offered informally rather than through visible institutional advocacy, partly because faculty who speak out may themselves face consequences for their career progression, including promotion (Roundtable India, 2023). 

This worry is one part of a broader pattern of exclusion reported among SC/ST faculty in government institutions. Reporting by Scroll.in documented instances in which SC/ST faculty have experienced a sense of not fully belonging within their institutions, with some choosing to conceal their caste identity rather than disclose it openly. Taken together, this reflects institutional self-protection because faculty who share a student's caste location may themselves have limited security to openly challenge the structures within which they work. 

From cell to anti-caste institution

Darshan Solanki, Rohith Vemula, and Sahil Wakode keep exposing the difference between having a cell and having an effective anti-caste institution. A cell is a body that exists. An effective system is one that functions, and functioning requires work at three distinct levels. 

The first is prevention. Students and faculty need regular, structured sensitisation on caste discrimination, on reservation as a constitutional entitlement, on the meaning of substantive equality, and on the range of forms caste exclusion actually takes, from study groups to differential grading. 

The second is early intervention. A student should not have to wait until discrimination becomes unbearable before the institution registers that something is wrong. This requires faculty advisors, wardens, counsellors, and SC/ST Cell members to have an actual system for noticing students who are withdrawing, isolating, or repeatedly raising the same complaint informally without ever converting it into a formal one. This argument can be supported based on my own experience of caste discrimination in a hostel; instead of addressing the incident, I was strictly advised by the administration not to file a formal complaint against the person involved.

Such responses raise the larger question of whether, if students are discouraged from formally reporting caste discrimination, how can the absence of complaints later be treated as evidence that caste-based discrimination does not exist.

The third is accountability. Once a complaint is made, it should be investigated independently of the office or authority against which the complaint is made. The complainant should be protected from retaliation, the process should follow a clear and enforceable timeline, and appropriate consequences should follow when responsibility is established. 

The deaths of Darshan Solanki, Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi, Sahil Wakode and others have repeatedly raised the same institutional questions about caste, belonging, mental health, grievance redressal, and the distribution of power within higher education.

Equality in higher education, therefore, cannot end with admission. Legal equality can secure a student's right to enter an institution, but it cannot, by itself, secure that the student is treated as an equal once inside; it does not change the social relations, prejudices, and institutional practices the student may then face over the next three or four years. It is in this gap between the formal right to belong and the lived experience of belonging that much of the harm associated with caste discrimination takes shape. 

Higher education institutions ought to create an environment that promotes students’ studying, active participation, the ability to raise grievances, and a sense of belonging to the wider community. Genuine institutional equality is measured not simply by whether marginalised students are allowed to enter its classrooms, but by whether they can remain there with dignity, without being forced to choose between silence and institutional resistance. A dedicated SC/ST Cell should be established to make this substantive equality achievable.

Aditi Raibole is a second-year LL.B. student at Government Law College, Mumbai, and the General Secretary of its SC/ST Cell.

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