A student takes their own life on campus.
Then another.
Then another.
For years, IITs answered questions about this with silence.
Not anymore.
The Central Information Commission just stepped in — and ordered every IIT to form high-level committees to stop student suicides.
Here's how it happened.
Dheeraj Kumar Singh, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus who now runs an NGO for student mental health, filed RTI requests.
He wanted campus suicide data since 2005.
Age. Gender. Category. Course. State. Where it happened.
Not for headlines. For research — to fix his own counselling programmes.
Notice something?
At least one student has died by suicide almost every year at Kanpur for two decades.
That's not a one-off tragedy.
That's a pattern.
The institutes refused to share names, ages, and caste details.
Their defence?
Privacy law. The Puttaswamy judgment. The Mental Healthcare Act. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
The CIC agreed — on that point.
Personal data of the deceased stays protected. Full stop.
But here's where the story turns.
Commissioner Sudha Rani Relangi called it what it is: a "persistent crisis."
Especially at IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Kharagpur, where multiple deaths keep repeating year after year.
So instead of just closing the file, the CIC ordered something bigger.
👉 Every IIT must form a high-level committee to find what's driving these deaths — and fix it.
👉 Details of these committees must go up on official websites. Publicly. No hiding.
This wasn't a data request anymore.
It became a mirror held up to India's most prestigious campuses.
Brilliant students. Crushing pressure. Silence in between.
One RTI just forced 23 IITs to stop looking away.
(If you or someone you know needs support: Tele-MANAS 14416, Sneha's helpline 044-24640050.)
That's all for now!
