‘The other side’ of IITs: Student suicides haunt India’s top tech schools

Nearly 160 deaths recorded across the premier engineering colleges in past two decades – 69 of them in last five years.

Nashik, India – As Sanjay Nerkar returns from his office in Nashik, a small town in India’s Maharashtra state, he waits almost instinctively for a phone call – one he knows will never come.

For nearly a decade, while his son, Varad Nerker, lived away from home for studies, he called his father at dusk.

“No matter how busy he was, he would say, papa, bas awaaz sunni thi [I just wanted to hear your voice],” recalls the 55-year-old government employee.

That routine between the son and the father broke two years ago.

In 2022, Varad achieved the dream he had spoken about since childhood: Admission to one of the 23 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) schools across India, including the seven legacy IITs, established before 2000 and seen as the most prestigious.