IIT Bombay student Arman Khatri, arrested for allegedly abetting the suicide of fellow student Darshan Solanki, on Saturday filed his bail plea before a special court, which remanded him in judicial custody till April 29.

Khatri was arrested on April 9 by the city crime branch's special investigation team (SIT) and was booked under Indian Penal Code sections that deal with the abetment of suicide and criminal intimidation, as well as under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

As Khatri’s police custody ended on Saturday, the SIT sought to extend it by claiming that they had recovered certain messages sent by Solanki to Khatri a day before he allegedly killed himself.

Solanki, who hailed from Ahmedabad and was a first-year student of the B Tech (Chemical) course, died allegedly by jumping off the seventh floor of a hostel building on the IITB campus in suburban Powai on February 12.

According to police, two days before his death, Solanki had allegedly made a communal remark in a conversation with Khatri following which the 19-year-old threatened Solanki with a paper cutter. Solanki was visibly scared by this incident and had suffered from a fever that night, police claimed.

In their remand application submitted to the court on Saturday seeking further custody of Khatri, police said that Solanki had sent WhatsApp messages to Khatri apologising for the remark and saying that he was going back home and leaving Mumbai.

The application said the messages were recovered by the police late Friday night and hence further custodial interrogation of Khatri was required.

The court, however, opined that custodial interrogation was not required as the police had already seized the mobile phones of the accused. The court remanded Khatri in judicial custody till April 29.

Khatri through his lawyer Dinesh Gupta then submitted a bail application claiming that the student has been targeted and implicated in the case.

The bail plea claimed that there was no evidence to show Khatri had directly abetted Solanki's suicide. It further said that Solanki's parents had never levelled any allegations against Khatri in their complaint to the police.

Khatri is a young student with no criminal antecedents and such incarceration would hamper his future, the plea said.

The bail plea is likely to be heard next week.

Solanki allegedly jumped to his death on February 12, a day after the semester exams ended. Three weeks later, the SIT found a one-line note from Solanki's room that read, “Arman has killed me”.

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