The special investigative team of Central Crime Branch of police, that was installed to probe the mysterious death of IIT student Fathima Latheef, had grasped the inquiries with the three alleged professors of IIT Madras who were named in the suicide note of the student, that prompted the suspicious possibilities of harassment.

Despite the silence observed by the special investigative team on the course of the investigations, the reports from the prestigious institute had stated that these three professors appeared before the probing team in the campus on Monday where the trio had separately questioned by the team for nearly an hour.

The reports cited that the inquiries would be resuming on Tuesday and after the interrogations with the professors on their connection to the death, the special team is expected to conduct series of inquiries with the classmates and hostel roommates of Fathima Latheef when the students turn back to the institute after their study holidays. Before summoning the professors to appear for the investigations, the special team had questioned the staff members and the father of Fathima, Abdul Latheef.

The row of inquires comes in the middle of the ongoing indefinite hunger strike that was camped by two IIT Madras students on the campus on Monday demanding to stop the suicides in IIT and called on the institute to constitute complaint and grievance redressal committees to deal with the issues of the students. The students had threatened the administration to launch the protests if their demands failed to meet by the institute. Adding to them, most of the students union in the city had hosted protests against the institute and urged the police to conduct a fair and independent investigation into the death of Fathima Latheef.

On November 9th, Fathima Latheef, a native of Kerala who was pursuing her first-year postgraduate course in Humanities and Social Services had allegedly committed suicide in the premises of the institute and while it was initially told that she could have hanged herself by citing low marks in the examinations, her suicide note that was in her mobile phone had revealed that she could have been harassed by her department and by the professors. After visiting the premises and reviewing the investigations, the Chennai city police commissioner on last week transferred the probe to the Central Crime Branch.