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I do not write this as someone who hates IIT Bombay. I owe the institute my education. During my years there I met professors and students who were casteist, and I also met professors and students from ‘upper’ castes who supported me without hesitation and whom I still count as mentors and friends. Both exist. I refuse to generalise about every ‘upper’-caste professor or student on that campus, and I ask readers not to either.

But an institution is judged by what it does when one of its most vulnerable students dies. This time, IIT Bombay protected itself and sacrificed Sahil Wakode’s name. The media followed. The police let the evidence leak. And a family that lost its son was left to watch his last hour replayed for clicks.

Sahil cannot answer. So those of us who sat where he sat will.

I studied at IIT Bombay. I sat in the same examination halls, on the same benches, under the same system of invigilators and me along with all my batchmates were required to sign an honour code against cheating in exams and assignments by the Chemical Engineering department. So, when I watched the clip that has been circulating for a week, captioned as proof that Sahil Wakode “cheated,” I did not see proof. I saw a first-generation young student from a historically oppressed community being tried and convicted in a court where he can never speak: the internet.

Sahil, a second-year B.Tech student from a Scheduled Caste community, lost his life on September 18, hours after he was pulled out of a mid-semester exam. His family says he endured casteist remarks and harassment. An FIR under the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act names a member of the institute’s own faculty. Those allegations are for the Crime Branch to investigate. What happened next did not wait for any investigation.

The verdict came first

Within a day, IIT Bombay posted on X........

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