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National Institute of Technology student dies by suicide, sparks row
This incident marks the third suspected suicide at the institute this month and triggering student protests over alleged delays in response by authorities.
The spate of student suicides at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Kurukshetra has sparked concerns over the mental health of engineering students.
The institute, with over 5,000 students and known to be one of the country’s premier engineering institutions, reported four cases of suicide by hanging in the last two months. In a recent case, a second-year girl student at the artificial intelligence and data science branch and a native of Bihar’s Buxar hanged herself from the ceiling fan of her hostel room on Thursday.
Following the incident, protests erupted on campus with students demanding accountability and a probe into the suicides, prompting authorities to announce a 17-day “preparatory holiday”—a move students claimed was never announced before.
Out of the four victims were a 19-year-old boy from Telangana, first-semester student of computer science and engineering, who allegedly took his life on February 16; a 22-year-old third-year BTech student from Nuh, who was found dead on March 31, and a 22-year-old third-year civil engineering student from Sirsa, who was found hanging from ceiling in his hostel on April 8.
Also Read: 4 suicides in 2 months trigger protests at NIT Kurukshetra
Students allege institute’s negligence
Batchmate of one of the victims requesting anonymity alleged that the NIT authorities were “negligent in dealing with the recent suicide case” of Bihar girl and her body was hanging with the ceiling fan for four hours, despite timely information to the warden and other faculty.
One of the members of the student’s council alleged that after the suicides, the NIT assigned their academic professors as mentors, who have no professional experience in mental health, which shows their non-serious attitude on the issue. A second-year BTech student said, “Academic pressure, financial crisis and family expectations are prime reasons for suicides, besides a lack of adequate support systems and administrative sensitivity.”
While demanding accountability, the students said that more healthcare facilites should be made available on campus, with formation of rescue teams from private hospitals for early intervention in such cases of attempted suicide.
Teachers to identify students who need counselling: NIT
NIT in-charge of public relations, Gian Bhushan said following the protests, a student delegation met senior authorities to keep forward their demands. “Earlier, Dr Tejaswini Ananth Kumar, chairperson of the Board of Governors, also interacted with senior authorities, students, faculty and non-teaching staff to seek their views and suggestions. After the third suicide on April 8, we were implementing a host of measures, but now this incident has occured,” he said.
Bhushan said that the faculty was directed to increase interaction with the students and mentors have been assigned to a group of 20-25 students. “The teachers are told to identify the students who need counselling and further steps will be taken to help them. Hostel-wise stress management and sports activities will be organised, surveillance will be enhanced with CCTVs and grills, and closing vulnerable locations,” he added.
Preparatory holidays declared for 17 days
Meanwhile, the institute has declared preparatory holidays, beginning April 17 to May 4. A notification issued by registrar in-charge Vinod Kumar reads, “The theory exams will be conducted as per the date sheet already circulated. The practical exams will be held in an online mode and the schedule will be made available on the institute’s website.”
However, students said the institute has never given preparatory holidays before. “The classes that are supposed to happen until April 22 have been cancelled even though the syllabus is still incomplete,” a second-year student said.
Delayed response may reflect a deeper gap: Expert
Ganesh Kohli, founder of Mumbai-based International Career and College Counseling (IC3) Movement, which works on issues related to students mental health, said, “When incidents occur in close succession, it raises important questions about how visible and trusted student support systems really are on campuses. What is often perceived as a delayed response may reflect a deeper gap; students are not engaging with support early enough, and institutions are not always able to identify distress in time.”
“Our recent report also revealed that over 60% of students hesitate to seek help even when they feel persistently overwhelmed, often due to stigma or lack of trusted access points. In many cases, counselling remains episodic, activated during a crisis rather than embedded into everyday campus life. Prevention, therefore, cannot rely on isolated measures. It requires continuous, visible support systems, trained counselors, sensitised faculty, and peer networks so that students feel safe to seek help before distress escalates,” Kohli added.
Also Read: NIT Kurukshetra student found hanging in hostel room; suicide suspected
In March 2025, Supreme Court established a National Task Force (NTF) to look into student suicides and mental health in higher education institutions.
Based on the NTF’s early findings, the top court issued an interim order in January 2026, listing a host of measures to prevent suicides which includes– higher education institutions cannot evict students from hostels, bar them from exams or remove them from academic programmes if their scholarships are not disbursed on time, institutes have to report all unnatural deaths to the police, even if they occur outside of campus.
Union ministry of education officials did not respond to HT’s request for a comment.
In a March 29 order, the Union ministry had withdrawn the administrative and financial powers of NIT Kurukshetra director professor BV Ramana Reddy and formed a three-member committee to review the work, progress and affairs of the institute as well as the leadership role of the director.
One of the members of the panel said the committee visited NIT Kurukshetra once since the formation of the committee and will visit again next week. “Students-related matters were not directly linked to our terms of reference during the formation. Now, as suicide incidents are being reported from the campus, we are going to handle all issues including administrative issues like governance, recruitment, transparency and student issues like working of students support system,” the panel member told HT.
