Friends, about a week back, Sahil Wakode, a 22-year-old second-year BTech student of Energy Science and Engineering, was found dead in his hostel room on the Powai Campus of IIT Bombay. This came hours after he was allegedly caught using an iPhone and ChatGPT during the mid-term exam. The clips from the classroom CCTV camera prove this, and most of us might have seen this on social media.
As per a statement from IIT Bombay, no disciplinary action was taken against him. The instructor and head of the department counselled him and assured him it would not harm his academic career.
Sahil’s father has filed a complaint of alleging three months of caste-based abuse, threats and mental harassment. An FIR has been registered against Prof. Suryanarayan Dulla under section 108 of the BNS (abetment of suicide) and the SC/ST Act. The institute director denied this allegation and said there was no caste discrimination. The Mumbai Police Crime Branch is now investigating this case.
It is a known fact that when the IIT admissions are over, it is never revealed to anyone, including faculty members, whether the student is admitted under some reservation quota or under the general category. There are 1000s of students in IIT-Bombay, and faculty members are least bothered about students’ caste.
This particular student was privileged enough to use an iPhone. Yet he got admission to IIT Bombay through a reserved category, and he was reportedly caught using a phone during an exam. Now people are protesting, and some are demanding criminal action against the IIT professor who must have spent decades of studying and working to reach that position. Seriously, what exactly was the professor supposed to do? Look away when a student allegedly violated exam rules.
The issue is not with reservation itself. The issue is the mindset that somehow the professor becomes the villain for enforcing the academic rules. If someone is caught violating the rules, deal with the actual issue. Don’t turn the person enforcing those rules into the public enemy. Reservation can be debated. Cheating can be debated. But rules should not have different versions for different people.
A law like the SC/ST Act is like a fire extinguisher. When there is a real fire, it saves lives. But you can not use this Act for any offence committed by an SC/ST person. That is why misuse is not an insult to the law; it is the biggest threat to it. Every false case makes the next true victim harder to believe. So if caste abuse happens, it must be punished without mercy. If it did not, a man’s career and name must not be destroyed by a headline. The truth will come from evidence and not from timelines. Yesterday, thousands of faculty members and students came out at IIT-Bombay and staged a protest march condemning action against Professor Dulla.
Now comes the part which no one wants to talk about. Copying in an exam is wrong. FULL STOP. No caste, no reason, no pressure makes it right. No generation can be raised that believes rules are optional and consequences are cruelty. But look closely at the deeper wound. A 22-year-old could not see a way past one mistake. Somewhere we taught our children that marks are identity, that one error is verdict, and that failure must be hidden. Guilt says, “I did something wrong”. Shame says, “I am wrong”. Our homes and campuses keep feeding shame. Teach your child that cheating is wrong. Then teach your child that a wrong act never makes them a wrong person.
A law can punish the guilty. Only a healthier upbringing can save the young. Parental pressure should not be placed on a child, which may become the root cause of fear of failure.
Now there is a common feeling among the general public which is that the family of the deceased student is setting a wrong precedent of abusing the law that gives benefits of reservation using caste, and now abusing it by making accusations when their son was caught cheating and possibly took his own life because he could not hack the courses in IIT and now embarrassed himself getting caught cheating. The parent’s accusation that he was being harassed on a caste basis for the last three months does not hold good, because the student was in second year and not in first year; if any harassment should have happened, it should have happened in the first year also.
In the end, this case will become a clear case of misuse of SC/ST Act. I will not be surprised that if in near future there will be uproar in public to BAN reservations.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
25th September 2026