The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has taken cognisance of the IIT Bombay suicide case, as mentioned in a tweet from a student body of the institute today, May 31. The students had alleged that Darshan Solanki's suicide was "institutional murder" stemming from caste-based discrimination.
"The honourable @NCSC_GoI has taken cognisance of the institutional murder of Darshan Solanki and has ordered a hearing tomorrow. The prevalence of rampant caste discrimination in @iitbombay has been established through the data on reservations and student surveys and testimonies," the tweet from the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) read.
The Chief Secretary of Maharashtra, the Director General of Police, Maharashtra, the Director of IIT Bombay, the Commissioner of Mumbai Police and the Mumbai District Collector and Magistrate have been asked to appear before Subhash Ramnath Pardhi, Member of the NCSC for a hearing on the matter. The hearing is scheduled on June 1 at 12:30 pm at the Commission Headquarters in New Delhi.
In February, Darshan Solanki jumped to his death from the seventh floor of a hostel building at the IIT Bombay campus. Yesterday, May 30, the Mumbai police filed a chargesheet against a fellow student of Solanki, Arman Khatri. A note recovered from Solanki's room revealed that Khatri was responsible for his death. A probe by a special investigation team (SIT) of the Mumbai police revealed that Khatri had earlier threatened to kill Solanki after the latter made some comments about religion.
