New Delhi: Mumbai Police has arrested a batchmate of Darshan Solanki, the IIT Bombay student who died by suicide.Solanki was a Dalit student from Gujarat and his death in February had led his family and anti-caste activists to demand a thorough investigation into casteist practices at the premier institution.The special investigation team has arrested one Armaan Iqbal Khatri, The Hindu has reported. Police had allegedly “found a note purportedly left behind by Solanki blaming the former” for his death. As earlier reports on the note had mentioned, this discovery was made over a month after his death, from his room.Solanki’s father Rameshbhai told The Hindu that his family could not “place the handwriting” on the alleged note produced by police, but that forensic experts “confirmed it.”The Hindu report mentions that Khatri and Solanki had stayed in the same floor of the IIT hostel.The FIR registered by Mumbai Police charges Khatri under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code and some sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.The Wire had earlier reported – based on the depositions of individuals and organisations – on the indications of systemic flaws that the institute’s 12-member committee had failed to acknowledge in its interim report on Solanki’s death.The committee implied that Solanki’s “poor academic performance” and “aloofness” could have led him to end his life, saying there was no evidence of caste discrimination.Students on campus had initially told The Wire that little had been known of the committee at first.The Union Ministry of Education told the Rajya Sabha in March that 33 students across Indian Institutes of Technology have died by suicide in the last five years.
