IIT Suicides: On Plea Seeking Details, CIC Recommends High-Level Panel Into 'Persistent Crisis'
New Delhi: Flagging a “persistent crisis” of recurring student suicides, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has recommended the constitution of high-level committees across all Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campuses to examine factors contributing to the deaths and strengthen preventive measures, stressing the “dire need” for corrective action.
According to a PTI report, the CIC was hearing a batch of appeals filed by IIT alumnus Dheeraj Kumar Singh, who sought details such as age, gender, caste or category, academic programme, native state and location of death of students, scholars and research staff who died by suicide in IITs since 2005.
According to the petitioner, the IITs had denied the disclosure of personal details such as names, age and caste, citing privacy exemptions under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act.
Singh told the Commission that he was running an NGO for the rehabilitation and mental counselling of students and wanted the information to analyse the root causes behind suicides and strengthen counselling efforts.
Information Commissioner Sudha Rani Relangi noted that there was a “high concentration” of suicide cases, particularly in IIT Kanpur and Kharagpur, urging the varsities to set up panels to address factors leading to such incidents.
However, the CIC did not explicitly direct the IITs to disclose the information sought.
According to the NCRB’s ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2024’ report, student suicides have increased by nearly 4.3% – from 13,892 in 2023 to 14,488 in 2024. In fact, students accounted for 8.5% of all suicide victims in 2024, up from 8.1% in 2023, averaging to nearly 40 student suicides in a day – or almost one every 36 minutes.
“Each suicide is a personal tragedy that prematurely takes the life of an individual and has a continuing ripple effect, affecting the lives of families, friends and communities,” as per the NCRB report.
Student suicides at ‘elite’ institutions have been making headlines since the death of IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki. IIT Bombay repeatedly denied allegations of discrimination.
The Wire has previously reported on the link between caste discrimination and suicides in higher educational institutions The Supreme Court has also issued guidelines to the University Grants Commission on this, highlighting an underreported connection between rising suicides among Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students and the entrenched social discrimination on campuses.
A Rajya Sabha response in 2023 had revealed that between 2019 and 2021, 98 students from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities across central universities, IITs, NITs, IIMs and IISERs died by suicide.
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