A student was found hanging at IIT Delhi on Friday, taking to five the number of suicides in the first seven weeks of this year at the Indian Institutes of Technology, known for academic excellence and the inevitably accompanying stress.

A statement from the institute said MTech student Varad Sanjay Nerkar was found dead in his room at Dronagiri hostel.

Two of his friends said the young man from Nashik, Maharashtra, was a bright student and that the reason for his purported suicide remained a mystery. His parents have been informed.

“He (Varad) had CGPA scores of 8.8 in all his exams so far as part of the MTech course. He was the BTech topper from his college in Maharashtra,” one of the friends said. “He had recently received a placement offer.”

The institute’s statement said: “This challenging time re-emphasises the constant need for us to be there for each other. You are also requested to please utilise any of the multiple counselling avenues in our system if you need help in coping with this tragedy.”

A student said the counselling centre on the campus was open 24x7 but the students were reluctant to go there. “There is a stigma around mental health in India. Nobody goes to the counselling centre,” he said.

Dheeraj Singh, an IIT Kanpur alumnus campaigning for measures to prevent student suicides, said the 23 IITs had witnessed 15 suicides last year and 5 already this year. He said the figures were based on RTI replies and his personal sources.

The education ministry had in a reply to Parliament said the IITs witnessed seven suicides in 2018, eight in 2019, three in 2020, four in 2021 and eight in 2022.

“The IITs have chronically witnessed a 34 per cent higher suicide rate than other colleges in India and abroad with similar annual budget spends per student,” Dheeraj said.

He said the government, “being the principal funder”, must work out a policy to assuage “the mental health crisis in premier institutes such as the IITs, NITs and the IISc”.

“The ban on coaching for underage students has been a step in the right direction, but substantial reform is needed in IIT education because 60 per cent of the suicides are due to academic stress.”

The IIT Council last year discussed the rising suicides and decided to engage more professional counsellors for the students.

Singh said that of the 20 IIT suicides since January 2023, six were from the Scheduled Castes, three from the Scheduled Tribes, two from the Other Backward Classes and nine from the general category.

“These data reflect that those committing suicide in elite institutions like the IITs include not only SC and ST students, as is often portrayed, but also those from the general category,” Avatthi Ramaiah, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, said.

He said the overall data showed a relatively higher suicide rate among general category (GC) students.

“This seems to suggest that the GC students’ ability to cope with academic pressure is relatively lower than that of SC and ST students, who face not merely academic pressure but also other challenges that are equally, if not more, difficult to cope with,” Ramaiah said.

It appears that reserved category students tend to have a higher ability to cope with multiple challenges, he said.