The Mumbai Police chargesheet into the suicide of IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki has revealed that he faced large scale caste discrimination when his classmates got to know of his caste.
Filed on Tuesday in the Special Court hearing cases hearing offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the chargesheet has the statement made by Solanki’s mother. She said her son had told his sister sometime in December 2022 over a call that his fellow students’ behaviour to him underwent a sea change once they got to he was a Dalit.
Solanki had died by suicide by jumping from the seventh floor of the hostel in the IIT Bombay campus on February 12, 2023, a day after semester exams ended. Aman Khatri, a fellow student, who has been named in the chargesheet is out on bail after his arrest on the charges of abetment to suicide.
Khatri had allegedly threatened to kill Solanki after the latter had spoken offensively about his religion. Solanki’s mother told police of the change in behaviour of his friends when they came to know of his caste. Solanki had again raised this when he came on vacation for Makar Sakranti in January 2023. On February 12, he spoke to his mother on the phone around 12:20 pm and said that he would visit home on February 14, and they should invite their relatives for a get-together. Two hours later, his father got a call that Solanki had committed suicide.
He told his parents that he was enjoying his studies at the Institute but some students taunted him that he was getting free education. The chargesheet include statements of 55 witnesses, including some students and professors from IIT Bombay.
Dalit students continue to face the unrelenting pressure of caste discrimination in elite institutions in engineering, medicine and the humanities. Many have died by suicide as a result.
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