IIT Delhi Director Rangan Banerjee has warned of disciplinary action against students who are disrupting campus functioning amidst the protest over the death of 31-year-old MSc Physics student Rishikesh Kumar. The warning came following the students’ march at midnight across the campus on Thursday night with demands of a transparent probe into Kumar’s death.
In an email sent to students on Friday evening, the director highlighted that the situation had snowballed significantly on Thursday night when the protesters moved into residential areas between 10:30 pm and 12:30 am with some threatening and humiliating slogans.
“Such behavior compromises the safety, privacy, and peace of faculty members and their families, including young children and elderly dependents,” Banerjee said.
“The Institute will take disciplinary actions against individuals disrupting the peaceful functioning of the campus, including residential areas, classes, and academic and other activities,” he wrote.
“The external inquiry committee has started functioning,” Banerjee said.
When talking about the protest, a student said to FoEJ Media, “We have collectively decided not to individually interact with the media.”
The group of students have, in the meantime, expressed concerns that disciplinary action would affect their academic careers, including participation in placement activities.
“This is the first time that an institution like IIT is seeing this kind of a student uprising, and that has become the problem for the system. We all feel so isolated and haven’t been able to fight the current mechanisms. We marched to every hostel and residential area to ask for their solidarity and to ask for changes in a failing system,” the third-year student told NDTV on condition of anonymity.
“Our slogans last night were ‘Aravali hostel, bahar aao, humaara saath do; Professors, bahar aao, humaara saath do.’ ‘ We have video proof of our slogans too. But it’s being maligned as threats to professors,” the student said.
Referring to the Wednesday march, a group of students told FoEJ Media, “The concerned students marched from hostel to hostel, asking students and faculty members to join in solidarity because information around our demands and concerns is being misconstrued and manipulated.”
IIT Delhi has also reconstituted its external inquiry panel into Kumar’s death, appointing retired Delhi High Court judge Mukta Gupta as the new chairperson after Uttarakhand DGP Ashok Kumar stepped down due to personal reasons.
“We have continued to engage with our student representatives and other students in good faith,” Banerjee said.
The panel also consisted of AIIMS Delhi’s psychiatry department head Pratap Sharan, along with two student representatives and the IIT Delhi registrar. Meanwhile, an investigation into the death is also underway.
Earlier to this, the social media account of IIT Delhi, tweeted, “IIT Delhi has asserted that student welfare remains at the heart of its academic ecosystem, with several measures in place to reduce stress, strengthen mental-health support and improve grievance redressal.”
“Since the new curriculum was implemented in 2025, first-semester credit loads have been lightened, life skills courses added, and first-year departmental classes have been capped at 30–60 students with an aim to minimise student stress. Weekend exams are minimised, and credit distribution remains flexible,” the account tweeted in another post.
Rishikesh Kumar died by suicide on August 22 after jumping from the sixth floor of the LHC building, totaling eight in the past 30 months.
