The Congress on Tuesday (September 22, 2026) alleged that the government withheld data on suicides at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and claimed that more than half of the students who died by suicide in the premier institutions over the past five years belonged to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities.
Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal alleged that the Ministry of Education had deliberately excluded suicide-related data from its response to a parliamentary question he had raised in December 2025.
Venugopal alleged. The Congress leader linked the issue to the death of Sahil Wakode, who was from an SC community and a student of IIT-Bombay, and demanded an explanation from the government on why the data was not disclosed. “Sahil’s life mattered. His dignity mattered. His family deserves truth, justice and accountability,” Mr.
He said an Under Secretary in the Ministry had written to the IITs on December 1, 2025, seeking the relevant information, but the data was not included in the Minister’s response.
“When I raised this question in Parliament in a question to be tabled on 8th December 2025, the Ministry gave a vague response and evades disclosing specific numbers,” Mr. Venugopal said in a post on X. “This shows that their intentions were to lie to the people, to hide the extent of discrimination taking place at elite government institutions,” Mr. “When Sahil Wakode’s death has shocked the entire nation, hiding such data makes the government complicit in creating the atmosphere that caused Sahil’s death,” he said. Suresh said in a post on X.
