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Mangaluru: Sahil Wakode, a 20-year-old second-year B.Tech student at the premier IIT Bombay who belonged to the Dalit community, died by suicide on September 18. Within hours, the institute issued a statement that spent little time expressing grief and regret over the death of a young student on campus and much more on his alleged attempt to cheat in an exam.

The institute has since issued an apology stating that it “put out this statement without verifying whether Sahil had actually been caught cheating.” But the apology came a little too late. The institute’s first statement had instantly triggered a discourse that shifted the focus from the student’s tragic death by suicide – allegedly due to an act of casteism – to his alleged act of cheating, and to the notion that, since he was a “reserved category” student, he didn’t deserve to be in a premier institute.

Many faculty members at IIT Bombay and numerous social media users have since come to the defence of the professor, Suryanarayana Doolla, who is at the centre of the incident and has been accused of casteism and abetment to suicide. In defending the professor, Doolla’s supporters, it appears, are almost justifying the death of a 20-year-old who is not around to defend himself.

However, this is not the first time Doolla has been accused of overreach or, for that matter, casteism. Understanding what he allegedly did in Sahil’s case requires placing it against his past conduct – conduct that is itself symptomatic of how power operates in India’s premier institutes.

Doolla was appointed Dean of Student Affairs in 2023 and continued in the position until early 2026, when he was made Dean of Administrative Affairs.

In March 2024, a group of students, all from the engineering department, put together a play called Raahovan for the institute’s annual........

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