IIT-Bombay Dalit student death | Complaint of Darshan Solanki’s father sent to SIT probing case
The Hindu
Rameshbhai Solanki blamed the institute for enabling caste discrimination on campus, saying that his son’s death was a “direct result” of the discrimination and raised questions on the institute’s internal panel
Rameshbhai Solanki, the father of 18-year-old Darshan Solanki, who allegedly died by suicide inside IIT-B, on Thursday told The Hindu that he submitted a complaint to the Powai Police, alleging foul play in his son’s death. In the complaint, Mr. Solanki said that his son “suffered constant caste-based discrimination in the IIT Bombay campus, which the institute enabled to persist”.
Mr. Solanki had arrived in Mumbai from Ahmedabad, to submit the complaint on Thursday. “The police told me that they cannot register an FIR because the SIT was already investigating the case. They told me they will send a copy of the complaint to the SIT,” he said.
Confirming this, a senior Mumbai Police officer said that the police have forwarded a copy of the complaint to the SIT for further proceedings. The Powai Police on Thursday sent a letter to the SIT asking that appropriate action be taken on the complaint.
In the complaint, Mr. Solanki said, “I believe that my son’s death under suspicious circumstances is a murder committed at the hands of those individuals in the institute harassing and discriminating him on the basis of caste, and not a simple case of suicide.”
The complaint said that the Powai Police had proceeded to register an Accidental Death Report (ADR) in the matter “inspite of our repeated requests to register a complaint for murder in the matter”.
It added that the family had not been provided copies of the ADR, the post-mortem or any other documents related to the case, including clone copies of his seized devices, despite repeated representations to the police.
Mr. Solanki said in his complaint that the Powai Police had recorded his statement in addition to those of his wife, daughter, and other family members who mentioned caste-discrimination faced by the first-year Chemical Engineering student in IIT-Bombay. Despite this, the complaint alleged that the Powai police did not record statements of other family members who could speak to the 18-year-old’s experiences on campus.
Justice G. Jayachandran of the Madras High Court has said that Justice G.R. Swaminathan has exhibited bias against the State police by “showing interest in passing orders hastily without consulting the Bench partner (Justice P.B. Balaji)“ in a habeas corpus petition filed against the preventive detention of YouTuber ‘Savukku’ Shankar alias A. Shankar under the Goondas Act.