IIT suicide: Court reserves order seeking CBI probe

A division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice N Seshasayee before whom NSUIs plea came up on Friday reserved orders without mentioning a date after hearing bothsides.

The counsel appearing for the government submitted that the probe into the suicide is being done by a woman Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police C Eswaramurthy. Moreover, both the officers had earlier served at the CBI and the probe was progressing in the right direction, the counsel said.

However, when the NSUI’s counsel explained the reasons behind seeking a CBI probe, the bench observed that the petitioner by sending an email to the government on November 18 had rushed to the court without providing time for the government to respond.

NSUI represented by its president N Aswathaman had submitted that from April 2018 to November 2019 as many as five students have committed suicide at IIT (M) and Fathima’s father has given a statement that he suspects foul play since there was a suicide note on the cell phone and that her daughter’s room was tampered.

Further, on noting that IIT (M) has not taken any effective steps in respect of the continuation of students suicide which is still a mystery, the plea pointed out that even assuming that the special team appointed by the State police are properly investigating the same will lack credibility since the issue has raised several doubts among the public.

Until an independent agency like CBIinvestigates the case the truth will never come out, the plea said.