It doesn’t make sense.
It’s not supposed to happen.
We assume the best outcome any Indian student can hope for is admission into an IIT.
Hence, many think any Indian student who gets into an IIT should be happy.
Or at least, they shouldn’t be unhappy. And they should definitely not be killing themselves.
And yet, just last week, another bright student from IIT Bombay (IITB) committed suicide.
We assume that winning eliminates suffering. It doesn’t. Sometimes, the culture surrounding achievement can create a different kind of pressure.
He wasn’t the first. There have been three suicides at IITB in the last seven months of this year. RTI-based reporting found 15 student suicides across the IIT system in 2025, out of 65 over 2021–2025. This isn’t about who didn’t make it to IIT. This is about our crème de la crème, our top ranking students in the highly selective JEE exam. Why are they killing themselves?
IIT Bombay initially said the student had been found using a phone during an examination and had uploaded the question paper to an AI platform. Just a few hours later, the bright young boy was found dead, hanging from a ceiling fan in his room. To clarify, this connection is striking, but we still don’t know what caused the death.
The institute has since apologised for its earlier account, saying the circumstances remain under investigation. Subsequently, the student’s family has alleged caste-based harassment. The allegations led to an FIR, and the investigation has been now been transferred to the Mumbai Crime Branch.
While case specifics will emerge post investigation, the incident highlights many broader issues that exist in Indian society today. These are — the intense pressure to perform, how we view cheating in exams, impact of AI on education and mental health. Let’s look at these one by one.
1, Intense pressure to perform — Every IITian who makes it into an IIT is usually a local star. Toppers at their school, they are revered among neighbours, friends and relatives. However, once in an IIT, they are in a class full of people exactly like them. In a class full of toppers, not everyone can be a topper. Plenty have to be in the middle. Someone even has to come last. For someone who’s entire identity is about being a top student, the new reality of being just average in class can be devastating. Which is probably why some resort to unethical means, such as cheating.
2. How we view cheating — In many top US colleges, cheating is taken very seriously. Heavy disciplinary action often follows. In India, we are still unsure on what should happen to a student who is caught cheating in exams. In a society where corruption is rampant and normalized, where arranged-marriage grooms flaunt their ‘under the table’ income as an achievement, we still don’t know how to view cheating.
We want our IITs to be world-class. However, we find it highly uncomfortable if the institute comes down heavily on students who cheat. We still don’t know what happened to this student after he was caught cheating, or if the response was too high-handed. However, it is true that cheating in Indian colleges is more common than we think, and is often ignored. Making cheating worse is world’s latest hot development — AI.
3. The role of AI in teaching (and cheating) — AI is one of humanity’s most remarkable recent discoveries. Large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, can be used for both purposes — good or bad. They can be used to learn or cheat. Sadly, many are using it to cheat, complete assignments and avoid doing the work. We can actually use AI to make our kids smarter. Using AI effectively will require changes in teaching and assessment. Maybe we need to rethink how we conduct exams as well – so that AI based cheating is less possible. Maybe we need more oral examinations, supervised problem-solving and open-ended questions that test whether a student actually understands the material.
4. The importance of mental health — The multiple suicides at IIT tells us something. That good mental ability to solve physics and maths problems is one thing. Good mental health is another. India can do much better when it comes to recognizing mental health issues. Our own minds can work against our best interests if we do not have good mental health. Mental-health difficulties can affect mood, relationships, academic performance and the ability to cope with setbacks. Perhaps so many IITians are afflicted with mental health issues because of all the intense competitiveness they have had to face throughout their foundational years — compete to get in, compete to survive, compete to remain at the top. Surely human beings were not designed for so much competition. Maybe in the process of immersing themselves in studies, many are unable to develop other important human traits — emotional intelligence, communication skills and social interaction.
A suicide, whether in an IIT or outside, is a terrible thing. It’s even worse when a young person does it, someone who has their whole life in front of them. Maybe all these incidents are pointing us to a few things we need to reflect on as a society. We should not build a society in which academic competition becomes so central to identity that failure feels like a loss of personal worth.
And if you notice someone struggling mentally, don’t ignore it. Talk to them, listen without judgement, and encourage them to seek professional help when necessary. Who knows, you might be saving a life.