A campus in mourning, a system on trial

Sahil Wakode’s death, whatever its cause, is a verdict on a system that has failed its students and exposes the rot that has claimed three young lives

The death of Sahil Wakode, a second-year B.Tech student in IIT Bombay’s Department of Energy Science and Engineering, has shaken India’s academic conscience and dominated national headlines. On September 18, hours after he was allegedly caught using a mobile phone during a mid-semester examination-accused of uploading the question paper to an AI platform for answers-Wakode was found dead in his hostel room. No suicide note was recovered. What followed was swifter and murkier: protests erupted across the Powai campus, an FIR was registered under the abetment-to-suicide provision and the SC/ST Act, and within days, Professor Suryanarayana Doolla, who had invigilated the exam, was removed as Dean of Administrative Affairs.

The core dispute is now a contest of narratives. Wakode’s parents allege their son endured casteist slurs and “torture” for three months, allegedly at the professor’s hands and, they claim, on the director’s own instruction. IIT Bombay’s administration, led by Director Shireesh Kedare, has firmly denied any caste bias, noting that no complaint was ever filed with the institute’s SC/ST cell and insisting Wakode was merely counselled after the exam incident, not threatened with expulsion. His father disputes even the cheating narrative, calling it a deflection from harder questions the institute would rather not answer.

A responsible view must resist collapsing this into a single villain. If the caste allegations hold up, they demand the harshest consequences-for the individuals involved and for an institution now facing this charge twice in three years, since the 2023 death of Darshan Solanki reignited the same debate over caste on IIT campuses. But an FIR is not a conviction, and the administration’s denial, however self-serving it may appear, cannot be dismissed until the Mumbai Crime Branch’s investigation establishes the facts.

What is not in dispute, and should trouble everyone regardless of which account prevails, is that Wakode is the third student to die by suicide at IIT Bombay in seven months, after Naman Agarwal in February and Sohil Sangwan in July. That statistic alone indicts a campus culture, whatever the specific trigger this time. As things stand, Doolla has been removed from his administrative post, though not yet formally charged pending inquiry, while Kedare remains director despite student demands for his resignation. Protesting students have raised eighteen demands, chief among them an independent investigation panel-with external and student representation-expected to report by September 30, alongside a serious overhaul of the mental health and counselling infrastructure on campus.

The way forward cannot be cosmetic. IIT Bombay needs a genuinely independent probe insulated from institutional self-interest, a functioning and trusted SC/ST grievance mechanism that students actually believe in, and examination-malpractice protocols that counsel rather than terrorise students already buckling under academic pressure.