New Delhi: Gaining admission to an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is a dream forged through rigorous competition by hundreds of thousands of aspirants nationwide. Yet, behind the prestigious facade, India’s premier engineering institutions are increasingly coming under scrutiny for rampant academic pressure, social isolation and caste-based discrimination. Official data reveals that 53 students have lost their lives across the country's 23 IITs over the past five academic years, averaging nearly one student death every month.

The figures were submitted by individual IITs following a parliamentary question raised by Kerala MP K C Venugopal, directed by Nilesh Chandra Srivastava, Under Secretary in the Department of Higher Education. Between the academic years 2020–21 and 2024–25, out of the 53 deceased students, 45 cases (84.9%) were confirmed suicides, while eight were officially recorded as unnatural deaths. Crucially, 54.7% of these students (29 individuals) belonged to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities.
 

The tragic death of Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student at IIT Bombay, has once again brought these institutional fault lines into sharp focus.

 

Structural bias, isolation and caste-based harassment

According to campus insiders and student accounts, students admitted under reserved quotas frequently endure subtle and overt questioning regarding their merit. Direct taunts regarding reservation policies, insinuating that reserved-category candidates displace “more deserving” general candidates, remain common within classrooms and hostel corridors.

When students face academic hurdles, toxic remarks such as “You have reservations, so why worry about studying?” severely erode self-confidence. Furthermore, students report subtle segregation during group projects and study teams, where general-category peers often hesitate to include reserved-category classmates. This social exclusion directly impacts academic grading and fosters deep psychological isolation.

Bias extends into practical examinations and project evaluations, where students face disproportionately lower marks, derogatory comments when asking questions and public humiliation in lecture halls. In Sahil's case, his family explicitly alleged that a professor subjected him to targeted casteist abuse and mental harassment before his death.

Systemic identification further enables bias: category details (General, SC, ST, OBC) can be easily deduced from roll or enrolment numbers upon admission. Reports indicate that students and faculty use these identifiers to group students early on. National media outlets have also documented instances of informal segregation within hostel dining halls based on dietary preferences.


Year-wise escalation and regional breakdown

The data indicates a sharp increase in student fatalities in recent years:

  • 2020–21: 5 deaths (5 from SC/ST/OBC groups)
  • 2021–22: 6 deaths (2 from SC/ST/OBC groups)
  • 2022–23: 6 deaths (3 from SC/ST/OBC groups)
  • 2023–24: 17 deaths (9 from SC/ST/OBC groups)
  • 2024–25: 19 deaths (10 from SC/ST/OBC groups)

No IIT campus has remained unaffected. IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Hyderabad recorded seven deaths each over this period, followed by IIT Kanpur and IIT BHU Varanasi with six deaths each, and IIT Madras with five.

Looking strictly at suicides, IIT Hyderabad recorded the highest number at seven, while IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur reported six suicides each.

 

Parliamentary controversy and discrepancies in data

The Congress party has accused the Union Ministry of Education of suppressing official figures in Parliament. Despite receiving complete reports from all 23 IITs following Under Secretary Nilesh Chandra Srivastava’s directive on December 1, 2025, the Ministry did not table the data during parliamentary proceedings scheduled for December 8, 2025.

The five-part question submitted on the Lok Sabha website covered postgraduate and PhD admissions and dropouts, alongside specific queries regarding caste discrimination, suicides, unnatural deaths and the implementation of the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012. Opposition leaders argue that withholding these statistics undermines democratic transparency and distracts from a severe campus crisis.

Meanwhile, independent data compiled by IIT Kanpur alumnus Dheeraj Singh through Right to Information (RTI) applications and public records suggests an even higher casualty figure. According to Singh’s records, 171 IIT students died between January 2006 and September 2026. A staggering 120 of those deaths occurred between 2016 and September 2026, compared to 51 deaths in the preceding decade (2006–2016).


Call for systemic reform beyond counselling

In an August 2026 update, the Ministry of Education stated that comprehensive mental health and preventive measures were being implemented across campuses. Reports submitted to Parliament in 2024 noted that IIT Kharagpur alone employs 10 counsellors and two psychiatrists, while a total of 108 counsellors were active across all 23 IITs as of 1 December 2025.

However, academic experts argue that merely appointing counsellors is an inadequate response. Intense academic workload, social isolation, poor communication with faculty, job market anxiety and relative grading systems continue to drive severe psychological distress.