New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday said that “harassment” could have led to the suicide of 20-year-old Sushant Rohilla, who was student at Amity University.
According to an NDTV report, the top court observed that the suicide has "an element of suspicion about whether it was due to harassment" and appointed top lawyer Fali Nariman to help in the case.
The Supreme Court direction comes after it took suomotu cognisance of a letter written by a friend of the Amity law student.
Rohilla, a 4th year student of BA-LLB course in the college, had last month committed suicide at his residence in south Delhi's Sarojini Nagar area.
Family members and friends of a 20-year-old Amity Law School student, had staged a protest outside the college last month, alleging foul play on the part of its authorities.
Amity University, however, has denied of having any role in Rohilla's death and expressed grief over the incident. The Supreme Court has directed the University to present all facts in the case before it and ensure that such an incident does not happen again in the future.
The deceased, who was son of a joint secretary-level official in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, was debarred from appearing in the sixth semester exams in May due to "shortage of attendance".
According to his family, Sushant and 19 other students, who were not permitted to take the exams, were promised that they will be allowed to take the exams and promoted to the next semester.
The court did not issue notice to Amity Law School, which is affiliated to the Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University.
It, however, asked senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, who appeared for the institute, to file a response to the PIL which was instituted after taking note of the letter written to the CJI by one Raghav Sharma, a close friend of the deceased and a 4th year law student.
It has been claimed that 20-year old Rohilla, who could not attend classes for quite some time due reasons including his physical health, was depressed over the prospect of not being allowed to take the examination by the college because of lack of attendance.
The letter has blamed the Amity authorities for Rohilla's suicide on August 10 at his residence.
Alleging harassment by his teachers, his classmates had taken to the social media and launched protests on campus after his death to demand action against his professors, two of whom have resigned.
The letter to the CJI has sought that the apex court should take congnisance of the incident and order probe by an independent committee into such matters.
It also referred to the letter written by the student before taking the extreme step that he "might not mentally survive" the debarment.
The college said the student had 43 per cent attendance, whereas the attendance requirement of the University was 75 per cent.
