115 Students of IITs Died by Sucide in Last 20 Years, Reveals RTI Reply

As many as 115 students of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have died by suicide since 2005, of which, 98 were on the campus, and 17 were off campus, reported Hindustan Times. The data was received through a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by Dheeraj Singh, who is an IIT Kanpur alumnus and the founder of the Global IIT Alumni Support Group.

Singh had filed for an RTI application following the death of IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki on February 12, 2023. The data further stated that IIT Madras recorded the highest number of student suicides between 2005 and 2024 at 26. This was followed by IIT Kanpur with 18 student deaths, 13 at IIT Kharagpur, and 10 at IIT Bombay. This year, a total of five deaths have been recorded so far, the news agency reported.

“The higher education department, which comes under the union ministry of education, initially rejected my application and asked me to file separate RTIs for individual institutes,” said Singh adding that the ministry instructed all the IITs to share the required data after he filed an appeal.

However, according to Singh, only 13 out of 23 IITs have shared data in the last eight months, the report added. “I also collected data from authentic sources in the public domain, which included National Crime Record Bureau statistics and answers to questions posed in Parliament,” he added.

Singh also said that he wants to bring to light the huge pressure students face across IITs in India and added that it is time to take serious measures to curb this issue. “There is an urgent need to reform IIT education to make it less stressful for students, faculty, and parents,” he added.

In February, IIT Delhi conducted its biggest ‘Open House’ meeting to address student’s concerns following widespread protests on campus in the wake of the fourth student suicide this academic year. Students demanded setting up a permanent internal committee to look into suicides on campus. The Open House with the institute’s director Rangan Banerjee saw UG and PG students putting forth their demands asking for “systemic changes” in the way the institute functions.

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