Probe into alleged suicide of student can’t be revealed under RTI – IIT Kanpur
17 Jan, 2014On January 1, 2013 G Sai Kumar Reddy, a student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and a resident of Prakasham district in Andhra Pradesh was found dead along the Kanpur-Farrukhabad railway line.
The Students Welfare Dean of the institute said that the post-mortem report showed that the student was hit by a heavy object on head which prompted the institute to assume that he might have been hit by a train accidentally. Denying that the student might have committed suicide, the dean also said that the institute cannot keep an eye on all its 3,600 students. The dean also said that the purpose of formation of a four-member committee to look into the case was simply to find out the facts regarding the accident and not to probe the incident which is 10th such incident in the institute since 2005.
The reply to an application filed in this regard under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has shown that during the period from 2005 to 2010, eight students of IIT Kanpur committed suicide but in none of the cases an investigation committee was formed. The institute had constituted only fact-finding committees in each case. In the RTI reply, the institute also denied to make public the findings of the committee stating that it was an internal matter of the institute.