A Mumbai court has granted bail to Armaan Khatri, arrested in connection with the suicide of IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki. The court said that it would not be correct to conclude that the accused had committed the offense of abetment merely from the allegation contained in the suicide note. The court, in its Saturday’s order, said there was nothing on record to show that Khatri was harassing Solanki on grounds of caste discrimination or abetted him to commit suicide. Khatri was arrested on April 9. Additional Sessions Judge A. P. Kanade had granted him bail on Saturday.
The court, in its ten-page order, has said that no evidence of caste discrimination and harassment was found against the accused in the Darshan Solanki suicide case to show that the applicant/accused was harassing the deceased on the basis of caste discrimination. The court observed that apart from the name of the applicant/accused, the suicide note does not mention any act or incident under which it can be found that the accused intentionally abetted the deceased to commit suicide.
Know about this case
Solanki, a first-year BTech (Chemical) student from Ahmedabad, died after allegedly jumping from the seventh floor of a hostel building on the IIT campus in Powai on February 12, a day after he finished his semester exams. Three weeks later, the Mumbai Police’s Special Investigation Team found a one-line note from Solanki’s room, which read, ‘Armaan ne mujhe mara hai’.
The arrest was made on the basis of suspicion
According to the police, it has been learned that the accused Khatri had threatened to kill Solanki by showing him a ‘paper cutter’ for making objectionable remarks about his Muslim religion. Khatri, however, claimed in his bail application that he had no connection with the alleged crime and was arrested on suspicion almost two months after the incident.
