The Mumbai Police has recorded the statement of a batchmate of decedent IIT-Bombay student Darshan Solanki whom Solanki had confided that he felt threatened by Arman Iqbal Khatri a day before his suicide on February 12.
The Mumbai Police Special Investigation Team (SIT) arrested IIT-Bombay student Arman Iqbal Khatri on Sunday in connection to the alleged suicide of his batchmate Darshan Solanki. The action was taken after the police recovered a suicide note on March 3 from Solanki’s room that reads, “Arman has killed me.”
The note was sent to the handwriting analysis department of the Forensics which confirmed last week that the writing matched Solanki’s, giving a major breakthrough to the Mumbai police in the case.
Besides recovering the suicide note, the Mumbai police also recorded the statement of a batchmate to whom Darshan Solanki had allegedly confided a day before his suicide that he felt threatened by Arman.
In his statement to the police, the student said that when he met Darshan Solanki on February 11, the latter told him to “not be seen with him or else Khatri would harm him as well”.
An SIT source was quoted by media houses as saying that the student had met Darshan Solanki in his hostel room. “The latter told him to go away since if Khatri saw them together, he would harm him as well. When the student asked Solanki why Khatri would harm him, Solanki told him that he had made a communal remark, which had irked Khatri, who threatened him,” the officer added.
Meanwhile, Khatri who was interrogated by the SIT on Monday is believed to have shared an incident from the past. “Solanki had asked him why he carried a paper cutter in his bag to which Khatri claimed that he was going to harm two classmates. However, this was more in jest and much before any dispute between Khatri and Solanki,” the officer reported Khatri’s version.
It may be recalled that earlier a senior police official said, “We had recorded the statement of Khatri but he is not opening up about the reason that led to the dispute between them. Hence, we arrested him so that we can question him and get the exact sequence of events that led to the fight between Khatri and Solanki.”
The officer further said, “Based on the statements of other students we have recorded, it has come to light that nearly five days prior to the suicide, Solanki had passed a communal remark which had irked Khatri. The latter had threatened him with a cutter and said he would not spare him. Since then, Solanki was petrified and had also apologised to Khatri on a couple of occasions and the two had hugged as well. However, it appears he continued to be scared and had also developed a fever a day before he committed suicide.”
Notably, a report by Mid-Day suggested that the SIT has learnt that Solanki had apologised to Arman Iqbal Khatri multiple times in the week leading up to his suicide on February 12. “We believe that due to the threats, he apologised and wanted to mend his relationship with his classmate, or something else happened to him that led him to take such a drastic step,” the officer added.
Darshan Solanki suicide case
Arman Khatri and Solanki stayed on the same floor of a hostel of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and both were batchmates, according to police. During interrogation, the officers found that Solanki was scared of Arman Iqbal Khatri who is reported to be 19 years old.
IIT Bombay student Darshan Solanki jumped from the refuge area of the IIT-Bombay hostel building on February 12 at around 1 pm. He was taken to the hospital but the doctors declared him brought dead. A case in this regard was then registered at the Powai police station.
Darshan Solanki hailed from Ahmedabad and had joined the institute for a B-Tech course just three and a half months before the incident. Rameshbhai Solanki (47), the father of Darshan, had alleged that Darshan had discussed the caste discrimination he was experiencing at the institute with his older sister Jahnvi and aunt Divyaben.
An internal committee commissioned by the Indian Institute of Bombay found “no specific evidence of direct caste-based discrimination” resulting in the death of Darshan Solanki. The panel also alluded to his “deteriorating academic performance” as a possible reason for taking his life.
However, soon after Darshan committed suicide, a raft of left-leaning ideologues and supporters blamed caste discrimination as the reason for his decision to take the extreme step. They also abused Hindus, alleging that it was due to discrimination perpetuated by the higher caste Hindus that students are forced to the extreme step of ending their lives.
On February 24, the Maharashtra Home Department issued an order to transfer the investigation from the local Powai police station to the Crime Branch, just prior to the beginning of the state’s Budget Session on Monday. The crime branch formed an SIT to probe this matter. The SIT has now arrested the first suspect Arman Iqbal Khatri in this case.
