Special court grants bail to Darshan Solanki’s batchmate

The court has asked Khatri “not to make any inducement or threat to any person acquainted with the facts of the case so as to dissuade him or her from disclosing the facts to the court or any police officer or tamper with the evidence”

MUMBAI: A special court, set up under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, on Saturday granted bail to IIT-Bombay student Arman Khatri who was arrested on charges of abetting his batchmate Darshan Solanki’s suicide on February 12.

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The court has asked Khatri “not to make any inducement or threat to any person acquainted with the facts of the case so as to dissuade him or her from disclosing the facts to the court or any police officer or tamper with the evidence”. Besides, the court has restrained him from leaving the city without prior permission.

Khatri has been ordered to be released on a personal bond of ₹25,000 and one or more sureties of the same amount.

Khatri had claimed in his bail plea that the committee IIT-B set up to probe the suicide had not found anything against him in its probe. Even the Powai police, who initially investigated Solanki’s death, ruled out foul play, he said, adding he was falsely implicated in the case.

Solanki, 18, a first-year chemical engineering student, jumped from the seventh-floor refuge area of his hostel building on February 12. Some students and a security guard immediately took him to the hospital on the IIT-B campus where doctors declared him brought-dead.

On the next day, Solanki family members allegedly told the police that they did not suspect foul play. However, on February 16, when a Powai police team went to their residence in Ahmedabad, the family claimed that Darshan was a victim of caste-based discrimination prevailing at IIT-Bombay.

On February 24, the state government set up a three-member SIT headed by Lakhmi Gautam, joint commissioner of police, crime branch. The SIT on March 3 found a purported suicide note in Solanki’s room. It said, “Arman has killed me.” Solanki, according to the police, had written the words on the backside of one of his question papers.

Khatri was arrested on April 9, after the probe revealed that Solanki had made an adverse comment on his religion and Khatri allegedly threatened him with a paper cutter that he would not spare him. The chemical engineering student thereafter died by suicide, the SIT claimed.