Indian Institutes of Technology - the autonomous, reputed, esteemed and prestigious public institutes that remain as the lungs of the Indian higher education which largely exemplifies the standards of higher and technical education in India to the rest of the world. India has established about 23 IITs in the major cities and some of the institutes have been highly rated as the dream institutes for the Indian students to pursue their higher education. The IITs in Madras, Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Roorkee, Kanpur, and Bhubaneshwar have been in the dream list of the students as these institutes are consistently been ranked as top educational corridors for technological courses.

As these institutes, which were declared as institutions of National Importance, on one hand, have been deeply admired for its reputation and responsibilities of being the lungs of the higher education in India and on the other hand, the grounds of the institutes have been mourning with the sadden and chagrin reality of losing its hearts - the students. The students who dreamt of joining the IITs, the students who have aimed in contributing to the country's technical development, the students who worked hard to unleash the innovations are the ones who had faced unimagined, unfortunate and uncertain educational grounds that had led them to not leave the institution but to leave the world - through committing suicide.

If we list out the top ten universities of higher education in India, IITs would be deserved with about five ranks and this has been the same for many years that had portrayed as the leading institution in India which had webbed many students towards its campuses but for the recent years, the institutes have been uncovering the repeated episodes of suicides of the students.

In 2016, the then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir had tabled the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) which showed that the suicides among the students have been increasing every year. For the year of 2014, about 8,068 students had ended their life across India and in 2015, the numbers increased to 8,934 total deaths of suicides while 2016 crossed 9000 by recording about 9,474 deaths and the reasons like depression, academic pressure, family expectations, abuse and isolation have been queued up behind the premature deaths and IITs doesn't hold the exceptional as there were dozens of suicides in IITs in 2019 and the premises of IIT Madras and IIT Hyderabad had recorded with most number of deaths in the premier institutes and the number have been increasing despite the presence of wellness centers and mechanisms of counseling that were constituted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to prevent the suicides among the students in the campus of IIT.

Suicides are not new for IITs and the other premier institutes in India as from 2008 to 2011, about 26 students were committed suicides - of these numbers, 16 were from IITs while the National Institute of Technology accounted for eight suicides that were mainly due to the academic pressure, fierce competition and Isolation. 

For this year, about three suicides were recorded at IIT Hyderabad as in February 2019, a third-year student Anirudhya Mummaneni had allegedly jumped off from the hostel building and in July, a final year postgraduate student Mark Andrew Charles had hanged himself to death inside the hostel room while in October, 20-year-old Pichikala Siddharth, who was studying B Tech third year and committed suicide by jumping off from the third floor where he had written a suicide note in which he expressed that he can't tolerate the depression. On October 21st, 2019, Chirag Pravin Jain, a 20-year-old IIT Bhubaneshwar student who was native of Pune was found dead on the campus and the initial reports had asserted that he could have committed suicide.

The premises of IIT Madras had hosted about five suicides for the last year including the recent suicide of Fathima Latheef. In September, a final year student of Ocean Engineering, the native of Kerala's Palakkad had committed suicide and in January 2019, a first-year M Tech student with the nativity of Uttar Pradesh had self-destructed himself in his hostel room. Recently, a Ph.D. scholar of Jharkhand who was studying in IIT Madras had committed suicide and in December 2018, Aditi Simha, an assistant professor of IIT, hanged to death in the staff quarters on the campus.

The reports say that on November 8th, 2019 Fathima Latheef, the recent suicide victim of IIT Madras, lastly spoke with her mother and told her that she would be turning off the mobile phone by citing to prepare for her semester examinations and her mother tried to reach her friends as Fathima's phone remained switched off after which the family was contacted by the hostel warden who informed that Fathima had hanged herself to death the next day. The reason behind her death was not known until her mobile phone made a shocking revelation by carrying her suicide note accusing the professors of the Department of Humanities and Social Services for reportedly harassing her.

All of these deaths occurred in the nation's reputed institutes have interconnected each other and pictured the similarities of the reason behind the decision of students and its certain that the combination of academic pressure to excel in the studies, depression, isolation, family's expectations, and harassment has been driving the students to overrule their dreams to commit suicides and the recent death of Fathima Latheef has made a shocking revelation of the uncertainty on the grounds of IITs despite the claim of government that the prevailing wellness centers and counseling mechanisms would prevent the suicides.