New Delhi, Sept. 22 -- Twenty-three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) reported 45 student suicides between 2020-21 and 2024-25, with 28 involving students from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities, according to official data compiled from all IITs.
The figures were collected in connection with Lok Sabha Provisionally Admitted Starred Diary No. 3682 dated December 8, 2025. The 28 students from the three communities accounted for more than 62 per cent of the total suicides recorded during the five-year period.
Of the 28 deaths, 12 involved OBC students, nine SC students and seven ST students. Sixteen students belonged to the General category, while one was from the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category.
The number of reported suicides increased sharply in 2023-24, when 16 deaths were recorded, compared with six in the previous year. The IITs reported another 13 suicides in 2024-25.IIT-Hyderabad recorded the highest number of suicides during the five-year period, with seven deaths. IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur reported six each, followed by IIT-Madras with five and IIT (BHU)-Varanasi with four. In 2024-25, four of the 13 students who died by suicide were from the OBC community, while three were from ST and two from SC communities. The remaining four belonged to the General category. The official compilation also separately lists eight unnatural deaths during the five years. These cases are not included in the total of 45 suicides. The data does not provide a course-wise breakdown of the students who died or details of the circumstances surrounding the deaths. As a result, the figures alone do not establish the reasons behind the suicides.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.