Last month, finally, even the Supreme Court, taking note of recent suicides by students, said, ‘something is wrong’ after yet another student at IIT Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his room (this IIT has seen four ‘unnatural’ student deaths in seven months) and another student at Sharda University in Greater Noida died allegedly by suicide in her hostel room and named professors for her harassment and humiliation in her suicide note. She was repeatedly derided in the classroom. Even after her parents took up the matter with college authorities, nothing changed.

The Supreme Court has asked for responses from authorities of these institutions as regards how promptly they responded to these deaths and what steps they had taken once they came to know of these suicides.

On the same day, the UGC issued a show-cause notice to Kalinga Institute of Technology, Odisha, warning it against possible legal action and withdrawal of its deemed-to-be-university status in connection with the suicides of two students a few months back.

In February this year, a B.Tech student from Nepal was found dead in her hostel room, and again in May, another Nepalese student was found dead in her hostel room at KIIT. After the uproar, the UGC had appointed a fact-finding committee to investigate both cases.

The report of the committee accused the institute of failing to act lawfully on sexual harassment complaints,........

© Free Press Journal