A dedicated task force to deal with the troubling rise in student suicides across educational campuses was set up by the Supreme Court on Monday. This comes after a series of unfortunate deaths of students as a result of sexual harassment, ragging, caste discrimination, and academic pressure.
The bench headed by Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan were serious; after these incidents, they said that these cases were not isolated. “It is therefore necessary to talk about the pattern of student suicides… They are not isolated incidents, its the systemic intervention that disturbs us even more,” said the bench.
The recently formed task force will be headed by former Supreme Court judge S Ravindra Bhat. The committee has been ordered to submit a complete report within a period of four months. Included in this report are the causes underlying the student suicides and suggestions for actions that can be taken to fortify the protective mechanisms on campuses. Senior officials of higher education, social justice, women and child development, and legal affairs departments will be part of this committee, too.
This was in response to a petition filed by the parents of two students who died by alleged suicide at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi in 2023. The parents charged that the institute harassed them, blamed harassment on the institution, and the deaths resulted from negligence and failure of the institution to address campus harassment.
But the case had been closed by the police during inquest proceedings. The Supreme Court strongly criticized the closure, which judged it as erroneous and insufficient. If there are allegations that the children were harassed, and if parents say so, it is right for them to lodge an FIR with the police. The court stated closing the matter on the basis of inquest findings alone was not enough.
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