After undergraduate's death, IIT Kharagpur asks students to report mental stress signs of batchmates

Kolkata: After an undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur in Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal was found dead inside his hostel room, the authorities of the premier tech school turned to students asking them to keep watch on fellow hostel inmates and report if anyone showed any symptoms of depression.

Amit Patra, acting director of the IIT Kharagpur, had a meeting with some of the students, who were asked to report to authorities of the institute if they noticed any unusual behaviour by any of their batchmates or if anyone developed any symptoms of mental stress or if anyone of them were going through any difficult situation.

The students were also asked to encourage batchmates to seek help from counsellors if any batchmate experiences mental stress .

Shaon Malik, a third-year undergraduate student of electrical engineering, was found dead inside the room on Sunday. His parents, who had travelled from Kolkata to Kharagpur to meet him, asked for help from the personnel of the institute when he had not responded to the knocks on his door. When the door was forcibly opened, his body was found hanging inside the room.

Shaon's was the first such death in any of the IITs in 2025. The last such death was reported in 2024 from IIT Delhi, where the body of Kumar Yash, a second-year postgraduate student from Deoghar in Jharkhand was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his hostel room on October 22.

Shaon’s parents did not have an inkling of what was in store when they spoke to him over the phone the previous night, according to a police officer.

IIT Kharagpur stated that Shaon had been an academically gifted student and had been known for “his intelligence, dedication and promising future in the field of electrical engineering”.

Devika Pillai, a fourth-year student of biotechnology and biochemical engineering at the IIT Kharagpur, had died by suicide in June 2024. Three students at the IIT Guwahati and two each at the IIT Delhi and the IIT Kanpur had died by suicide in 2024. Altogether, 37 suicides had been reported from 11 IITs between January 2019 and March 2024.