IIT Delhi director warns students after a midnight march to faculty housing

IIT Delhi director Rangan Banerjee told students on Friday that the institute will take disciplinary action against anyone who disrupts campus life, including residential blocks, classes and other work. The email followed a march on the night of Thursday and Friday, from 10:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., that reached faculty housing.

Banerjee wrote that a group of protesters staged demonstrations directly in front of those houses and used unsavoury, humiliating and threatening language in their slogans. He said the conduct compromised the safety, privacy and peace of faculty members and their families, including young children and elderly dependents.

Why the campus is still out

The protests are in their sixth day. They began after the death of Rishikesh Kumar, a 31-year-old MSc Physics student. Students have demanded a full investigation, compensation for the family and accountability from the administration. Banners at the main gate have used that three-word list: investigation, compensation, resignation.

Students describe Thursday night as a peaceful march and say they called on professors to come out and stand with them. One chant reported from the walkways was a request for faculty to leave their houses and join. Some students also said unknown people filmed them on Friday without consent and that they felt they were being profiled.

Banerjee's letter listed steps already taken. An external inquiry committee has started work. After the previous chair recused himself, the panel was reconstituted under retired Delhi High Court judge Mukta Gupta. Support for the family from the institute benevolent fund has been approved. A separate voluntary fund from faculty, students and staff has been opened. An external ombudsperson is due to be named next week. In a video on the institute's official handle earlier on Friday, Banerjee said current student-support measures were not enough and that trust had to be rebuilt by other means.

What disciplinary action would mean

Students read the email as a threat to placements. One told reporters that a disciplinary mark would keep people out of hiring drives and that the mail was meant to thin the crowd. Whether the director follows through will be visible in notices, not in the email itself. IIT Delhi has the power to suspend, fine or block a student from activities. It has not, as of Saturday evening, named individuals from the midnight march.

Guards had barricaded the main gate during the week as the sit-in continued. The residential-zone turn is the line the director drew. Faculty housing is not a classroom and not a protest ground in the administration's account. In the students' account it is where the people they want answers from actually live, and a two-hour visit at night was the point.

The gap that remains

An external judge on an inquiry, a benevolent-fund payment and an ombudsperson are process. They do not tell a campus why a postgraduate student died or whether a supervisor, a rule or a silence contributed. Until that file exists in public, the night marches have a subject. The director has now said that the subject does not license slogans at a faculty door after midnight. Both statements can sit on the same campus. They do not resolve each other.