Dalit medical student’s death rocks Kerala, family claims college faculty humiliated him over caste, complexion

Police in Kannur initially registered a case of unnatural death. However, on Sunday, they added abetment of suicide charges under BNS section 108 to the case. Provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were also invoked. Two faculty members have been booked in the case.

A special investigation team headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police (Kannur) Hariprasad has been formed to probe the case. Police claimed that a preliminary probe revealed Nithin had taken a loan from an online app, and that agents of the lender used to threaten him over the phone after he defaulted on repayment. Police also claimed that these agents got in touch with college faculty members over the matter. The cyber police have registered another case on the basis of the alleged threats issued by agents of the loan app.

Meanwhile, the management of the self-financing college has also taken action after the allegation of the student’s humiliation came to light. On Sunday, the management suspended a department head and an associate professor, and ordered a probe into the allegations.

The action comes after an audio clip, purportedly from Nithin, came to light on Sunday, in which it is alleged that he faced insults and harassment from the faculty. In it, Nithin is purportedly heard saying, “He (a teacher) openly insulted me, and I suffered to the maximum extent. My answer sheets were shared among all students in the classroom, pointing out certain spelling mistakes. Yesterday, while I was attending his class, he ridiculed my mother… After coming out of the staff room, he called me an idiot. I replied, ‘same to you’. The staff room is a place where we are subjected to gang attacks. He (the teacher) told me that if I spoke out, my hands and legs would be chopped off. I dared him to do it.”

Nithin’s sister, Nikitha, said her brother had been repeatedly subjected to insults over his complexion, caste and his parents’ occupation. “He had told me that the department head used to insult him by calling him a mad dog. He was insulted in the classroom. [The department head] made other students laugh when Nithin was insulted in the classroom. Other students, too, had complained against [the department head] in the past, but no action was taken against him. Nithin had talked to us two hours before he fell from the building. We suspect some foul play, and we want to know what happened to him. He had fallen not from his college building, but from the building of the medical college (which is on the same campus),” she said.

Nithin had joined the self-financing dental college in September last year.

Principal Vinod Moni did not respond to requests for comment.

The death of the student has triggered widespread protests in the state. The State Human Rights Commission sought a report from the Kannur City Police Commissioner on the incident.

Congress Working Committee member Ramesh Chennithala called for a high-level probe into the death of Nithin Raj. “Police should take a serious note of the allegation that he had faced insults over caste and colour. The action against the faculty members should not be limited to suspension. The discrimination over caste in Kerala, which boasts about progressive and renaissance movements, is shocking. During the last decade of the LDF regime, attacks on SC/ST communities have increased manifold,” he said in a statement.