Kolkata: The external expert committee formed by IIT-Kharagpur to investigate the spate in suicide deaths on the campus will be arriving on Monday to interact with students. The expert committee, according to an internal IIT-Kgp student communication, “will be visiting our campus tomorrow and has expressed interest in directly engaging with students to gain deeper insights. They are specifically looking to interact with two groups: Students who have held or currently hold leadership roles, and students who are not currently in any official positions of responsibility.” The interaction is scheduled to begin in the Senate Hall in IIT-Kgp at 9.30 am on Monday.A fourth-year mechanical engineering student, Ritam Mondal (21), was found hanging in his room at Rajendra Prasad Hall of Residence on Friday morning. This marks the fourth death in seven months and the fifth in a year that the premier institute has witnessed. The expert committee comprising psychologists, legal and police professionals, counsellors, educationists and alumni was formed after mother and brother of Aniket Walkar, the IIT fourth-year ocean engineering and naval architecture student who was found hanging in his room at J C Bose Hostel on April 20, had written to the IIT acting director Amit Patra, seeking an independent probe into the circumstances leading to his death and also urged authorities to find the reasons behind the large number of suicides at IIT-Kharagpur. IIT-Kharagpur’s decision to form an independent experts’ panel gains significance following the Supreme Court’s March 24 directive to set up a National Task Force to examine the rising number of suicides at education institutes.A senior official said, “The director wanted the expert committee to interact with the students and identify the key challenges and recommend measures to bolster the mental health eco-system of the campus.” In a press statement on May 10, the institute said that the committee will identify the key challenges such as inadequate resources, administrative shortfalls, academic environment and other factors that hinder the resolution of mental health issues in the campus and will recommend measures in addition to the existing ones to strengthen it. Bracing back-to-back suicides on the campus, the institute has already taken several measures. TOI has reported that IIT-Kharagpur authorities have decided to set up a student-led task force at the wing level of every hostel. This initiative aims to ensure that students themselves remain vigilant about their peers and can report any noticeable behavioural changes to the hall council and hall management committee for prompt action. The institute is scheduled to roll out a holistic intervention program combining cutting-edge Technology, super-specialized expert support, highly personalized interaction for the well-being of all students, with a mission of ensuring that such an incident never occurs again.
