Mallika Dureja
On Monday, the ongoing investigation into the suicide of an 18-year-old student at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay who died after jumping to her death from the seventh story of her hostel on February 12 was handed over to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Mumbai Crime Branch.
Lakhmi Gautam, who is a deputy commissioner of police with the Mumbai Crime Branch, will be in charge of the investigation. According to the Mumbai Police Department, other members of the squad include the Deputy Commissioner of Police for the Crime Branch, Krishnakant Upadhyay, and the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Jai Prakash Bhosale.
“The investigation into the death by suicide of a student at IIT Bombay who was 18 years old has been transferred to the SIT Crime Division. Lakhmi Gautam, Deputy Commissioner of Police for Criminal Investigations, will serve as the team’s leader. In the beginning of this month, the student had committed suicide by jumping off the seventh story of his dormitory. His family had complained about discrimination based on caste, “Mumbai Police said in a statement.
On February 12, the student, who has been identified as Darshan Solanki and was 18 years old, committed suicide by jumping off the seventh story of the hostel where he was staying.
The Powai police department opened a new line of inquiry into the incident after filing an Accidental Death Report (ADR) related to it.
Darshan was attending the BTech programme at the IIT Bombay in Mumbai. He was originally from Ahmedabad.
As soon as the information that the person had committed suicide was obtained, the police arrived at the scene and took him to the hospital, where the medical staff confirmed that he had passed away.
On February 13, Darshan’s family asserted that he was subjected to social discrimination at IIT Bombay, and they suspected that there was some foul play involved in his passing. In later years, his family made a demand for an investigation to be conducted by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
On the day that Darshan passed away, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay issued a statement vehemently refuting news reports that claimed the first-year B.Tech student had been the victim of caste discrimination.
“When the authorities are still looking into the situation, it would be inappropriate to make such accusations. There is no indication, based on the original inputs provided by friends, that the student was subjected to any form of discrimination of this kind. We ask that such accusations, which are not supported by evidence, not be disseminated “according to the statement issued by the institute.
In an interview with ANI, Darshan’s father, Solanki, expressed his belief that it was impossible for his son to have committed suicide.
He went on to say that the individual “must have been harassed, and I worry that he was killed.”
He claimed that Darshan had brought up the issue of social discrimination, but no one had listened to him.
Jahnvi, Darshan’s sister, shared the sentiment that the family is “one hundred percent certain that he was assassinated.”
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“First of all, they informed us that Darshan had been involved in a collision. When our relatives arrived in Bombay, they were informed that he had suffered an injury after falling down some stairs. We found out later that he had committed suicide by jumping off the seventh story of his hostel. How is it that there are three contradictory accounts of his passing?” Jahnvi said.
She suggested that some of the other students were responsible for his passing away by striking him on the head.
She claimed that the police and the administration at IIT Bombay were fabricating a suicide story in order to cover up the fact that the victim had been murdered. She stated, “We are one hundred percent positive he was murdered.”
