IIT Delhi warns protesters 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 residential areas, classes or other campus work. The email, sent around 5 p.m., described a two-hour demonstration outside faculty housing between 10.30 p.m. and 12.30 a.m. on 27 August. Banerjee wrote that protesters used "unsavoury, humiliating and threatening language" in slogans and that the noise reached families with young children and elderly dependents.

The warning landed on the fifth day of protests that followed the death of Rishikesh Kumar, a 31-year-old MSc physics student, on campus on 22 August. Students have asked for the resignation of the dean and associate deans of student affairs and the head of the physics department, Rs 1 crore for Kumar's mother, written answers from the administration, and a guarantee that protesters will not be punished. They have also pointed to eight student deaths on campus in 30 months, two of them this year.

The external inquiry has already been rebuilt once. Former Uttarakhand director general of police Ashok Kumar was named to chair it and recused himself after students objected to remarks he had made about youth protests. Justice Mukta Gupta, a retired Delhi High Court judge, now chairs the panel. The other members are Pratap Sharan, head of psychiatry at AIIMS Delhi, two student representatives and the IIT Delhi registrar.

Banerjee's Friday mail listed steps already taken. The external committee has started work. Support for the family from the institute's benevolent fund has been approved. A separate voluntary fund from faculty, students and staff is open. An external ombudsperson is due to be named next week. In a video posted on the institute's official handle earlier on Friday, the director said existing student-support measures were "not enough" and that trust had to be rebuilt by different means.

Students who spoke to reporters after the email read it as a threat to placements. Disciplinary action at an IIT can keep a student out of the hiring season. That is the lever. It is also the reason some protesters have kept their backs to cameras. One scholar told The Indian Express that fear of administrative payback was why people would not show their faces.

Thursday night's march toward faculty blocks, with the chant "Professor bahar aao, aao hamara saath do," was an attempt to pull teachers into the dispute. Friday's mail draws a hard line around those blocks. The inquiry under Justice Gupta will look at what happened to Kumar. The campus argument is now also about whether a midnight crowd at a teacher's door is protest or intimidation. Both questions will sit in the same inboxes until the panel writes.