The persistent incidence of student distress and extreme steps at the country's premier engineering institutions has once again come into sharp focus following a tragic occurrence at IIT Bombay. Comprehensive official figures covering 23 IIT campuses across India document that 45 students lost their lives to suicide between the academic years 2020-21 and 2024-25. A particularly alarming dimension of this five-year record is that 28 of those who died belonged to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) backgrounds, highlighting an acute vulnerability among marginalized student cohorts.
Parliamentary Record Outlines Demographic Breakdown
The consolidated information emerged in response to a starred question tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 8, 2025, drawing on official records submitted by all individual IITs. The 28 students from marginalized backgrounds represent more than 62 percent of the 45 suicide cases documented during this timeframe. Breaking down the numbers further, 12 students were from the Other Backward Classes (OBC), nine from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category, and seven from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. In addition to these, 16 students belonged to the general category, while one student was from the Economically Weaker Section (EWS).
Sharp Spike Recorded in 2023-24 with Hyderabad Leading the Count
Year-on-year trends show that the number of student suicides rose sharply during the academic year 2023-24. While the preceding year 2022-23 recorded six instances, the count climbed to 16 in 2023-24. The grim trajectory continued into 2024-25, which saw 13 students die by suicide. Across individual campuses over the entire five-year window, IIT Hyderabad registered the highest count with seven student suicides. IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, and IIT Kanpur followed closely with six cases each, while IIT Madras reported five instances and IIT (BHU) Varanasi recorded four.
Among the 13 students who died in the 2024-25 period, four belonged to OBC, three to ST, two to SC, and four to the general category. The official compilation specifically notes that eight unnatural deaths that took place during this five-year span were documented under a separate category and are not part of the 45 recorded suicide cases.
IIT Bombay Witnesses Third Campus Tragedy in Seven Months
This broader data surfaces against the backdrop of a recent tragedy at IIT Bombay's Powai campus, where a 22-year-old student was found hanging inside his hostel room. Police officials indicated that Sahil Ravindra Wakode, a second-year BTech student in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering hailing from Maharashtra's Yavatmal district, had allegedly been caught using a mobile phone during an examination. According to an official statement issued by the institute, the student had uploaded the examination question paper to ChatGPT to generate answers.
On Friday, Wakode was discovered hanging from a ceiling fan in Hostel 4 after hostel mates noticed an absence of response from his room and alerted authorities, who then summoned the police. Investigators confirmed that no suicide note was recovered from the premises. This incident marks the third student suicide at the Powai campus within a span of just seven months. Earlier, in February, another second-year BTech student took his own life, followed by another 20-year-old second-year BTech student who died by suicide in July 2026 at the commencement of the new semester.
