New Delhi: The alleged suicide of 20-year-old IIT Bombay student Sahil Wakode has brought renewed scrutiny on a grey area that educational institutions have long struggled to address: can the mechanisms in place recognise when a student is in distress and ensure they receive help when they need it?
Wakode’s death has raised questions on the systems meant to identify students who are struggling, hear their concerns and intervene when they believe they are facing discrimination or other forms of distress.
India’s premier educational institutions have witnessed multiple student deaths over the years. According to Dheeraj Singh, founder of the Global IIT Alumni Support Group and an IIT Kanpur alumnus, 73 cases of suicide or unnatural deaths were reported among IIT students between September 2021 and August 2026. Wakode’s death is the latest in that troubling pattern.
The pattern after such tragedies is familiar: committees are formed, Parliament examines the issue, the UGC issues guidelines and recommendations are made on reducing academic pressure, and addressing discrimination. The harder question is how much of this reaches students when they actually need help.
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Can students get the help they need?
It is not that institutions lack mechanisms. IITs have on-campus counsellors, student wellness centres, student volunteers and grievance-redressal systems. Several institutes also use online or app-based platforms to connect students with counsellors, while some have screening and peer-support programmes to identify students who may need help.
Yet an interim report by the Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force on Prevention of Suicides in Higher Educational Institutions found that faculty members across IITs lacked adequate training to address mental-health concerns and support students.
The report suggested that the problem at engineering institutes, including IITs, was not simply the absence of counselling services but the tendency of these systems to be reactive rather than proactive.
“The question is no longer whether IITs have counselling systems; the question is whether they are systematically learning and changing the institutional conditions that students experience,” Singh said. He added that the data suggested existing systems were not effective enough in preventing the rapid deterioration of students’ mental health and wellbeing.
Dr Aqsa Shaikh, a member of the task force, said highly competitive institutions such as IITs can be difficult to navigate, particularly for students already dealing with other pressures. “Simple humane gestures and empathetic behaviour from all concerned can make the journey easier. Sometimes, to save a life, we don’t need rocket science but simply humanity, empathy and some support,” she added.
What IIT rules say about reporting malpractices in exams
That question of empathy is also at the centre of the allegations surrounding Wakode’s case.
According to IIT Bombay, Wakode was caught uploading a question paper to ChatGPT on his phone to seek answers during an exam. The institute said he was counselled, assured that the incident would not affect his academic career and sent back to his hostel. His parents, however, alleged that he faced caste-based discrimination from the exam invigilator, Professor Suryanarayana Doolla.
The institute’s rules typically require an instructor who detects academic malpractice to prepare a report, collect evidence and submit it through the head of the academic unit to the Departmental Academic Disciplinary Action Committee (D-ADAC). The student is given an opportunity to respond before the institute-level action committee decides on further action. The examination rules at all IITs explicitly prohibit carrying mobile phones in examination halls.
Dr Shaikh said the case raised questions about how institutions communicate disciplinary action and respond when a student dies by suicide. The issue, she said, was not simply whether the institution’s action was right or wrong, but how sensitively it was communicated.
“The case raises important points on how to handle instances like unfair means in exams, the administrative actions, and the communication of the same. The question is not if the action of the institution was right or wrong—but how sensitively it was communicated,” Shaikh told ThePrint.
In Wakode’s case, however, the disciplinary process did not run its course.
“This is a very complex case, where the process could not even proceed and, unfortunately, the student died by suicide,” a former IIT director told ThePrint. The former director said one incident alone could not explain such an extreme step and added, “Either the student had been facing some issues earlier, or he was experiencing some other form of distress. It is unfortunate that this was not identified earlier and that this incident ultimately led to the death of a young, innocent life.”
At the same time, he cautioned against holding a single professor responsible for Wakode’s death, calling it “unfair”. He added, “The matter needs to be inquired into. We should leave it to the system to decide before passing judgment on one professor who was following the academic norms.”
Most IITs have similar processes for academic malpractice, under which the faculty member who detects a violation is not necessarily the person who decides the punishment.
At IIT Kharagpur, for instance, faculty members who identify academic malpractice are required to report it to the examination officer, after which the Examination Malpractice Committee takes up the case. Any decision is made after hearing both the student and the invigilator.
Wakode’s parents’ allegations against Doolla have also brought attention to the safeguards intended to prevent caste-based discrimination in higher education.
Protection against discrimination
The UGC’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations, 2012 prohibit caste-based discrimination and harassment and require institutions to take steps to prevent discrimination against SC/ST students. The regulations provide for an Anti-Discrimination Officer as well as a mechanism for complaints and follow-up action.
The UGC’s separate Student Grievance Redressal Regulations, most recently revised in 2023, provide another avenue for students to raise complaints against higher-education institutions. They require at least one member or the chairperson of a grievance redressal committee to be a woman and at least one member or the chairperson to belong to the SC, ST or OBC category.
Parliamentary data also point to the challenges faced by students from marginalised communities. Between 2019 and 2023, 1,068 SC and 408 ST students were recorded among 8,139 who dropped out of IITs.
The figures do not establish why these students left. But they underline the importance of academic, social and mental-health support for vulnerable students, particularly those who may be less likely to seek help themselves.
The issue has been under scrutiny at the highest levels. In 2025, amid concerns over student suicides in higher educational institutions, the Supreme Court constituted the national task force headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Ravindra Bhat.
But even with counselling centres, grievance mechanisms and other institutional safeguards, identifying students in distress cannot rest with institutions alone, as reaching every one of them individually is simply not possible, IIT officials say.
“Nothing is foolproof. The success of student mental-health and well-being programmes depends on students as well. Not every student is vocal enough to reach out to a committee, counsellor or volunteer on their own,” another IIT director told ThePrint.
“Expecting professors to identify every vulnerable student can be difficult when they may be teaching classes of 200-300 students at a time. This makes early identification a shared responsibility,” he said. A roommate who notices a student showing signs of distress, a parent who becomes concerned or a faculty member who sees a student struggling can all play a role in alerting the institute, he added.
(Edited by Chingkheinganbi Mayengbam)
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