No one is answering me, claims IIT-B student’s father

The protest was called by former Rajya Sabha MP and educationist Bhalchandra Mungekar at Azad Maidan on Saturday.

Mumbai: “On February 12, at exactly 12.30 pm, I got a call from Darshan. He was very happy. The exam went well. He was planning to call all his relatives on February 14. And around 1 am, Darshan died. No one is giving me an answer as to what exactly happened in these 30 minutes. Will anyone answer me?” Darshan’s father, Ramesh Solanki, asked the IITB administration at a protest on Saturday.

“Darshan was brilliant from a young age. Living on daily wages, we didn’t even know what IIT was. But he found out about it on the internet and he was determined to get into it. He could not clear in his first attempt, so he dropped a year. He fulfilled his dream of taking the entrance exam again. But we didn’t think his dream would take such a turn,” said Ramesh, teary-eyed. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

The protest was called by former Rajya Sabha MP and educationist Bhalchandra Mungekar at Azad Maidan on Saturday.

Darshan Solanki, a 19-year-old Dalit student studying at IIT Bombay, died by jumping from the 7th floor. Alleging that the suicide was due to caste discrimination, various organisations staged a protest on Saturday. Darshan’s father, mother, sister and other 25 relatives had come to Mumbai.

“Darshan was brilliant from a young age. Living on daily wages, we didn’t even know what IIT was. But he found out about it on the internet and he was determined to get into it. He could not clear in his first attempt, so he dropped a year. He fulfilled his dream of taking the entrance exam again. But we didn’t think his dream would take such a turn,” said Ramesh, teary-eyed.

His sister, Janhvi Solanki, claimed that Darshan said that other students were not helping him. “Darshan told me that caste discrimination was happening in IIT, but we didn’t pay much attention to it,” she added.

His father demanded that the incident be investigated by a scheduled caste officer rather than the present officers of the Powai Police Station. “Though the Maharashtra government and the Gujarat government are cooperating with us, we have not received even a single courtesy call from the IIT administration,” alleged his father.

During the agitation, ex-MP and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mumbai, Bhalchandra Mungekar, said, “All organisations have come together to demand the implementation of the Prevention of Caste-Based Discrimination Bill in all higher educational institutions of Maharashtra, including IIT-B, to set up an effective mechanism to destroy cattiness mentality in higher educational institutions, to effectively implement the anti-ragging law, to destroy religious discrimination.”

Mungekar also informed them that he, former MP Husain Dalwai, and one of the organisers, Ramesh Kamble, had met the members of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of this case and explained their views.

Since 2014, 122 students have died by suicide in centrally funded higher education institutions. Most of these students belong to the SC, ST, or OBC communities.