Mumbai Police detained the parents of deceased IIT Bombay student Sahil Wakode and student protesters on Sunday after clearing and demolishing a protest site near the institute’s main gate, according to a report by Indian Express. The action took place a month after Wakode died by suicide on September 18.
Ravindra and Sonali Wakode had arrived at the campus to pay homage to their son. Ravindra Wakode also submitted a letter to the institute’s Registrar before sitting at the protest site with students who had been demonstrating there for about a month.
According to the family’s lawyer, Siddhartha Ingale, the couple was detained shortly after Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad left the site following a meeting with them. Ingale said he was also detained along with the parents and that they were being taken to Azad Maidan police station.
“The parents were only sitting at the protest site, where the father had submitted a letter to the Registrar. Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad was present to meet them. But soon after she left, the police detained the parents along with me and the protesting students,” Ingale was quoted as saying.
The reported police action followed an earlier detention of around 10 students from the protest site. Those students were released shortly afterwards and returned to the location to join the demonstration in support of the Wakode family.
Ingale said police later asked Ravindra Wakode to leave the site. He allegedly refused to do so until the detained student activists were released, after which he and his wife were detained. Around 16 students present at the protest site were also allegedly taken away in a police bus as the area was cleared and demolished, the report said.
The incident places the focus on how protests are managed within educational campuses, particularly when students and family members are seeking institutional responses after a death. The available report does not establish the institute’s position on the demolition, the detentions or the contents of the letter submitted by Wakode to the Registrar.
The protest had continued for approximately a month before Sunday’s action. The reported detention of the family and students, and the removal of the protest site, now form the latest development in the continuing dispute at IIT Bombay. Further official details from the police or the institute were not included in the supplied report.
