Overview
- A 31-year-old M.Sc. physics student, identified as Rishikesh Kumar, was found dead after an apparent fall from the sixth floor of IIT Delhi’s Lecture Hall Complex on Saturday, August 22, and police recovered his mobile phone for examination.
- Hundreds of students staged day-long sit-ins that suspended classes and submitted a demand charter calling for an independent probe, resignations of senior student-affairs officials and the physics HOD, Rs 1 crore in compensation, and protection for protesters.
- On Tuesday IIT Delhi announced a five-member external inquiry panel led by former Uttarakhand DGP Ashok Kumar with Prof. Pratap Sharma of AIIMS as a member and gave the committee two weeks to report, while offering medical reimbursement, benevolent-fund support and a voluntary fund for the family.
- Kishangarh/Delhi police have registered a case that includes abetment of suicide and are collecting the student’s counselling records and other materials as part of the investigation.
- The family and students allege repeated administrative failures — including denial of hostel accommodation, lack of academic support and humiliating treatment — and protesters reject the inquiry as inadequate while demanding structural reforms to IITs’ mental-health and grievance systems; activists point to a wider pattern of student deaths at IITs in recent years.