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IIT Madras suspends professor over student’s suicide
The student’s brother attached a six-page letter handwritten in Hindi saying the scholar was on medication for mental health issues
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has suspended a professor months after the family of a PhD student at the institute blamed him for his suicide in March. The student was found dead on March 31 and his brother wrote to the institute blaming his PhD supervisor Ashish Sen for it.
“Prof Ashish Sen has been suspended based on the direction of the Board of Governors. Institute is following all due procedures,” a spokesperson for the institute said.
IIT Madras is yet to specify when he was Sen suspended and a complaints committee’s findings against him.
The PhD scholar at the mechanical engineering department lived outside the campus. His WhatsApp status before his suicide said: “I’m sorry, I’m not good enough.” This was the third suicide involving an IIT Madras student since February.
In an email to IIT Madras’s director V Kamakoti, the student’s brother attached a six-page letter handwritten in Hindi. It said the student was on medication for mental health issues, which the supervisor knew and worsened by adding pressure on him. “He had a meeting with his supervisor on March 31 morning, came back home, and put up the Whatsapp status ‘I’m not good enough’ before killing himself,” the email said. “He informed us that his degree will be delayed because the guide was making him do more work.”
The access to the lab of the student, who was due to complete his PhD thesis in three months, was allegedly restricted.
On the day of his suicide, IIT Madras said that he was a student with an “exemplary academic and research record” and his death was “a big loss to the research community”.
