The Greater Bombay Sessions Court on Wednesday, May 10, granted bail to Armaan Iqbal Khatri, a student accused in the IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki suicide case. While granting the bail, the local court remarked there was no evidence of abetment to suicide against Khatri.
In its ten-page order, the court has observed that no evidence of caste discrimination and harassment was found against the accused in the Darshan Solanki suicide case to show that the applicant/accused was harassing the deceased on the basis of caste discrimination, as per a report by ANI.
"In the suicide note, apart from the name of the applicant/accused, there is no reference to any act or event under which the applicant is alleged to have willfully omitted or knowingly aided or abetted the deceased to commit suicide. There is nothing on record to show that the applicant/accused had abetted the deceased Darshan to commit suicide, except for one incident of the accused showing the paper cutter to the dead Darshan," the court mentioned.
Darshan Solanki allegedly committed suicide at IIT Bombay by jumping off the seventh floor of a hostel building located on the campus on February 12 this year, a day after his semester exams ended. His family alleged foul play in his death and claimed that he faced discrimination at the campus for belonging to a Scheduled Caste (SC) community.
Following these complaints from the family members, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Mumbai Crime Branch police probing the suicide of an 18-year-old IIT-Bombay student arrested Khatri, a student of the same institute in connection to the case. A case was also registered under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Solanki belonged from Ahmedabad and was pursuing BTech at IIT Bombay. His father, Ramesh Solanki, further requested the authorities to take action against the local police for not conducting a fair probe. Following the demands for a detailed probe by his parents, on February 28, the case was transferred to the SIT.
During the SIT inquiry, many students of IIT Bombay told the police that there was a dispute between Solanki and Khatri a few days before the suicide. When the police inquired about the reason, the students told them that Solanki had commented about the Muslim society, following which Khatri had threatened him.
On April 7, the SIT received a report from a handwriting expert which said the purported suicide note found in the deceased's hostel room was written by him. "There used to be an argument between accused Armaan and Darshan, after which accused Armaan threatened him by showing a knife," officials said. Powai police then registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) and an investigation was started into this matter, as per a report by ANI.
