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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

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...

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.

The Faridabad File

Writer: Akhilesh Sinha
Akhilesh Sinha
Nov 11, 2025
3 min read

The Delhi bomb blast underscores how deeply Pakistan’s intelligence networks have infiltrated India’s institutions under the cloak of academia.

The deadly car blast near Delhi’s Red Fort that killed thirteen persons and injured over thirty others exposes a new mutation in India’s fight against terror. While the trail leads to Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Pakistan-based militant group long synonymous with terror strikes in India, the probe has revealed a more insidious convergence of academia and ideology.


In the joint operation carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana police teams, officers raided a warehouse in Faridabad and discovered 360 kg of explosives alongside a cache of sophisticated weapons. The property had been rented by Dr. Mujammil Shakeel, a physician with no prior criminal record. A separate search in Fatehpur Taga uncovered something even more alarming: over 25 tonnes of explosive material, stored in industrial quantities.


The network came to light after the arrest of Dr. Adil Ahmad, another physician, from Anantnag, who had been working quietly at a private hospital in Saharanpur. His interrogation exposed links to Jaish-e-Mohammed. An AK-47 rifle was found concealed in his hospital locker. When investigators began connecting the dots, the threads pointed back to Al-Falah University in Faridabad, an institution once known for its medical and engineering faculties.


Breeding ground

At the heart of the investigation is the allegation that elements within Al-Falah had become a breeding ground for radicalisation. Dr. Shakeel and another doctor, Shaheen, were both associated with the university. The latter’s car, found packed with advanced weaponry and an assault rifle, was allegedly used in an attempt to establish Jaish’s first female operational cell in India - a project once floated by Masoor Ahmad, a senior figure in the group.


Meanwhile, police raids on the residence of Dr. Ahmad Mohiuddin Sayed, who headed a department at the same university, yielded vials of the lethal toxin ricin. More potent than cyanide, ricin has long been studied as a potential biological weapon.


In Gujarat, the state’s Anti-Terrorism Squad recently detained three individuals with ISIS links. One of them, again, was a doctor. Such cases reflect a disturbing transformation in the profile of Indian extremists. The traditional image of the impoverished, uneducated militant is increasingly giving way to an educated, well-placed and professionally skilled terrorist.


This intellectualisation of jihad is neither accidental nor spontaneous. Security analysts see the fingerprints of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which for decades has combined covert operations with psychological warfare. The agency’s strategic logic is simple: a radicalised elite class, especially within technical or medical institutions, can amplify the reach of extremism under the cover of respectability.


The Delhi blast itself bore traces of professional planning. The man who perished in the explosion was identified as Dr Umar, another alumnus of Al-Falah University. Witnesses recall that his car, parked near the Red Fort for hours, detonated shortly after leaving the site, leading investigators to suspect that the blast may have been triggered intentionally to erase evidence of the explosives inside.


For India’s counter-terrorism agencies, these discoveries have forced a reckoning. The rapid coordination between the Delhi, Haryana, and Jammu & Kashmir police in the days following the blast has already been praised as among the most seamless intelligence integrations since Operation Sindoor, which was conducted in retaliation to the Pahalgam strike earlier this year. Yet, the Faridabad case worryingly points to terror networks quietly incubating within the country’s own classrooms, clinics and research laboratories.


The parallels with earlier waves of terror are unmistakable. Between 2005 and 2013, India endured a grim series of serial bombings that prompted the U.S. State Department to issue travel warnings. Those attacks, too, bore the hallmark of coordinated planning and cross-border financing. The current resurgence, analysts fear, could mark the return of a familiar pattern in which local recruits act as the operational arm of a foreign intelligence design.


The digital footprints are telling. Taliban-linked commentators such as Haider Hashmi and Burhanuddin, writing on social media, circulated screenshots of Pakistani users openly celebrating the Delhi blast. “Everyone knows where the terrorists’ dens are,” one post declared in a sardonic reminder of Pakistan’s long-denied complicity.


From Bhutan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced sorrow and steely resolve. “The horrific incident that took place in Delhi yesterday evening has saddened everyone,” he said. “The conspirators behind it will not be spared.” His words echoed those uttered after the deadly Pulwama attack of 2019.


While the Indian government will no doubt give a fitting reply to this latest outrage, the deeper lesson from the blast is that India’s enemies are no longer on the periphery; they are now drawing recruits from the country’s classrooms, laboratories and hospitals.

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