Former Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala expressed his support on Tuesday for Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s professor Suryanarayana Doolla, who was suspended from his post of Dean (Student Affairs) on Monday amid an investigation into the death of 20-year-old student.
What happened?
IIT Bombay’s Professor Suryanarayana Doolla was suspended on Monday with immediate effect amid probe into the death of 20-year-old second-year student in the campus, who allegedly died by suicide on September 18. On that day, Doolla was invigilating the mid-semester examination from 11 am to 1 pm and saw the student allegedly using a mobile phone during the examination. The student had allegedly uploaded the question paper to an AI platform to seek answers. Later in the day, the student from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, was found dead. He allegedly died by suicide. The student’s family alleged that he was subjected to institutional harassment and caste-based discrimination before he took the extreme step.
He added that the student’s family “deserves answers” but the professor “deserves a fair hearing”. The IIT-Bombay faculty members held a march in Doolla’s support and the campus’s Faculty Forum said that the Professor followed “Senate-approved exam procedure” when he reported the second year B Tech student for alleged phone use on September 18.
