Legal Weapon

The death of Sahil Wakode at IIT Bombay is undoubtedly a tragic incident. It also raises a difficult question that should not be lost amid the understandable anger on campus: when does a genuine allegation of caste discrimination become a criminal charge, and what happens when the extraordinary force of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act is invoked before the facts have been established?

Wakode, a second-year student, died by suicide last week, hours after he was caught using a mobile phone during an examination. IIT Bombay says he had uploaded the question paper to ChatGPT, but that no disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against him. He was counselled and assured that the incident would not damage his academic career.

His parents have subsequently alleged that Wakode had been subjected to caste-based harassment for several months and named Professor Suryanarayana Doolla in an FIR alleging abetment to suicide, along with provisions of the SC/ST Act. The institute has denied that any complaint of caste discrimination was made by Wakode during his tenure. Its SC/ST cell has also said it received no such complaint. The investigation has now been transferred to the Crime Branch.

The SC/ST Act exists because caste oppression is real, and victims require a law capable of confronting it. But precisely because the law is stringent, its invocation cannot become a substitute for evidence. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasised that the statutory ingredients of an offence must actually be made out. The court has also held that where a complaint does not prima facie disclose an offence under the Act, its stringent restrictions on pre-arrest bail do not automatically apply.

Teachers must be able to enforce examination rules without fearing that every disciplinary confrontation could acquire a caste dimension. The tendency to turn a student’s caste into the explanation for every institutional conflict involving an SC/ST student is disturbing and must be resisted. If every disciplinary action involving a reserved-category student is presumed to be caste discrimination, the distinction between discrimination and ordinary institutional accountability begins to disappear.

Equally, an institute cannot hide behind procedure if evidence eventually establishes discrimination or harassment. If Professor Doolla did indeed use casteist language, threatened Wakode or treated him differently because of his caste, those allegations must be investigated fully and dealt with under the law.

But the answer cannot be to criminalise the invigilator first and investigate later. 

IIT Bombay now has two obligations: establish, without prejudice, what happened in those crucial hours and examine the broader pressures facing its students. The police must establish whether the allegations under the SC/ST Act have factual and legal substance. The institute must ensure that teachers can enforce academic integrity while students have credible avenues to report genuine discrimination. The tragedy demands accountability. It does not demand a predetermined culprit.