The All India Students’ Association (AISA) held a protest outside the main gate of IIT Delhi on August 23 following the death of Rishikesh Kumar, a second-year MSc Physics student who died on August 22 after falling from the sixth floor of the Lecture Hall Complex.
AISA expressed grief and solidarity with Rishikesh’s family and friends and demanded an independent inquiry into his death and the wider pattern of student deaths at IIT Delhi. This is the second student death at the institute this year and comes amid a long-standing crisis that the administration has failed to address.
Addressing the protest, JNUSU president and AISA leader Aditi said Rishikesh had been denied a major research project and was forced to drop a semester. She said the administration’s response to student deaths has become a familiar script of reducing every death to individual mental illness, issuing a condolence email and moving on without examining the institutional conditions driving students into distress.
Aditi said denial of academic opportunities, punitive semester drops, unchecked faculty discretion and an inadequate and stigmatised counselling system are not incidental factors but causes that need to be confronted. She demanded accountability for the academic and institutional structures that shape students’ futures and mental well-being.
AISA demanded an independent inquiry into Rishikesh’s death and the pattern of student deaths at IIT Delhi. It also demanded complete transparency regarding the institute’s counselling infrastructure and its actual accessibility to students.
The organisation called for a review of the discretionary powers exercised by supervisors over students’ academic futures and demanded an end to the administration’s practice of shielding itself from media scrutiny and public accountability.
AISA said student lives cannot be reduced to individual explanations while the institutional structures responsible for academic pressure, insecurity and exclusion remain untouched. It demanded immediate measures to ensure accountability, dignity and safety for students at IIT Delhi.
