Ajay Sree Chandra's father with his son's picture Photo: S. Radhakrishna

SUICIDES ARE not new in Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science (IISc), with academic pressure taking a toll on its researchers. But the suicide of 21-year-old Ajay Sree Chandra, a student from Andhra Pradesh, has thrown up allegations of caste bias, possibly for the first time in the institute.

Ever since the Biology student pursuing an integrated PhD hanged himself in his hostel room on August 27, rumours began to circulate that despite his competent work, Ajay was rejected time and again because he hailed from the “reservation category”. Ajay, who belonged to the Scheduled Caste Madiga community, hailed from Malipuram village in Nalgonda district. Staffers and students say faculty members “generally inclined against reserved category students” would make him feel he was far inferior to others in his batch. No one on campus is, however, willing to go on record about this. A student requesting anonymity says, “Apparently, Ajay had written a suicide note to his lecturer saying he was sorry for being absent for lab meetings, that he was not well. But he did not name anybody.”

Media reports claimed Ajay committed suicide because his father wanted him to quit the institute to finance his brother’s education. His father V. Raveendra Kumar, a lecturer at the Government Polytechnic College in Hyderabad, filed a complaint with the Sadashivanagar police station after he encountered strange behaviour from the IISc.

He told TEHELKA, “On August 27, I received a call at 10.30am from the IISc about Ajay’s death. His friends said that they had found a suicide note which said he was unable to cope with the stress. When I arrived in Bangalore, they changed the words. The suicide note apparently ran into seven pages. But after a lot of difficulty, others in the institute managed to procure only censored versions of his diary. The post-mortem was conducted long before I arrived.”

“Ajay stood 12th in the IISc exam and could have got a merit seat easily. But they put him in the reserved category,” Kumar says. Ajay’s academic record was also meritorious. He scored 88.83 percent in Class X. In his pre-university course, he scored 94.14 percent and in his BSc, he scored 83 percent. Kumar adds, “Every time my son said he was being harassed, I would ask him to take it in his stride.”

The Bahujan Students Network, a Mumbaibased group that started a blog against caste discrimination on campus, has come out with a report based on inputs from IISc students.

Says the report: “Our investiga-tion clearly proves that Ajay was terrorised by someone in the laboratory. The person who used to terrorise him cannot be anyone from among the students or the non-teaching staff.”

SOON AFTER Ajay’s suicide, a group of students and faculty at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) held a meeting to pursue the matter.

“We wanted the IISc students to join us. But they were extremely afraid. The institute does not tolerate any kind of protest or threat to its interest,” says Sanjay Chowdhury, NLSIU student. E-mails hint at gag orders on students who had anything to do with the incident. However, IISc director P. Balaram rubbishes the suggestion. He says, “If people say they are not talking because they have been told not to talk, it is internal again. The veracity of their claim must be checked.”

Samata Sainik Dal president M. Venkataswamy, who led a protest on September 28, says, “The campus and the police are hand-inglove. The police termed it an unnatural death instead of a suicide. The director and lecturers are casteist.” He added that his party would write to the University Grants Commission about it. The police refute Venkata - swamy’s allegations. Sadashivanagar police station Inspector Nagaraj says the missing suicide note is with the police but refuses to
disclose its contents.

Following the questions thrown up by Ajay’s father, the institute constituted an in-house inquiry committee to probe the boy’s death. The committee is yet to come out with its report. A faculty member requesting anony - mity said the suicide could be the result of a very strict professor who “has the tendency to harass all students alike and who did not understand that some students were more sensitive than the others”.

Balaram says, “I have no reason to believe the suicide was the result of specific pressure because of his community. The institute is open to an outside probe as long as it comes with government sanction.” He adds that the institute will be looking at hiring professional counsellors even though they already have student counsellors. The state Human Rights Commission has now said it will investigate the case.

WRITER’S E-MAIL
radhika@tehelka.com