In 8 yrs, 15 IITians from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh committed suicide

Students, alumni, faculty members and academics attribute the unfortunate trend to three issues – language barrier, north-south bias and jeering by peers. 

Getting admission to the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is a dream of many students. But it comes with a heavy price tag for some of them. As per a report published in The Times of India, a scan of records revealed that between 2014 and October 2022, at least 15 students from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have died by suicide across various IITs, including Kharagpur, Hyderabad and Guwahati.

The latest case is of a BTech student, G Mahesh Sai Raj, who allegedly ended his life on the IIT Guwahati campus on October 10 after he was terminated for poor academic performance. While nine students who allegedly committed suicide were doing BTech, the rest were were either pursuing MTech or PhD. 

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had in December 2021 told Parliament that since 2014, 34 students from the IITs had died by suicide. Students, alumni, faculty members and academics, that TOI spoke to, attribute this unfortunate trend to three issues, typically faced by some students from the Telugu speaking states - their failure to adjust (either owing to a language barrier or the fact that most of these students come from an overprotective college environment), a north-south bias (in case of some IITs) and jeering by peers for being products of certain coaching centres from Hyderabad. 

Read more: 

• Philippines students come up with creative hats to curb cheating, images go viral 
• Student’s death sparks outrage among students at IITKGP 
• IIT Madras, BHU to organise ‘Kashi Tamil Sangamam’