45 IIT Students Died by Suicide in Five Years, 28 From SC, ST and OBC Communities

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 in connection with a provisionally admitted Lok Sabha starred question.

The 28 students accounted for more than 62 per cent of all reported suicides. Of them, 12 were from OBC, nine from SC and seven from ST communities. Sixteen belonged to the General category and one to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category. The number of suicides rose sharply from six in 2022-23 to 16 in 2023-24, before reaching 13 in 2024-25. Of the 13 deaths in 2024-25, four involved OBC students, three ST, two SC and four General-category students.

IIT-Hyderabad recorded seven suicides, the highest among the institutes over the five-year period. IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur reported six each, while IIT-Madras recorded five and IIT (BHU)-Varanasi four. The compilation, prepared for Lok Sabha Provisionally Admitted Starred Diary No. 3682 dated December 8, 2025, separately recorded eight unnatural deaths, which were not included in the 45 suicides.

The figures come amid a wider national examination of student distress. The Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force (NTF) has identified academic competition, social exclusion, caste-related concerns, financial stress and gaps in institutional support as areas requiring closer scrutiny. Its survey found 34 per cent of participating students had felt like outsiders, while 15 per cent reported a period of severe distress and 9 per cent reported frequent suicidal thoughts.

The NTF also recorded 2,066 OBC, 1,068 SC and 408 ST IIT dropouts between 2018 and 2023. It found more than 70 per cent of responding higher educational institutions lacked a full-time mental-health professional, while fewer than 4 per cent reported suicide-risk protocols. About 45 per cent had not conducted faculty sensitisation workshops in the previous 18 months.

The task force has examined 30 institutions across 10 states and 25 stakeholder consultations, while the Supreme Court has pushed for stronger suicide reporting, professional mental-health services and institutional safeguards.

However, the IIT compilation provides no course-wise breakdown or individual circumstances behind the deaths. The figures therefore cannot establish why particular students died, underscoring the need for deeper examination of academic, social and institutional factors.