58 seconds of CCTV, one verdict: How News18 put a dead IIT-B student on trial

Five days after Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student, died by suicide at IIT Bombay, News18 aired two segments built around CCTV clips from his exam hall, one 10 seconds long and one 58. 

His parents have accused Prof Suryanarayana Doolla, who invigilated the exam, of caste-based discrimination, and police have registered an FIR naming him and others under abetment-of-suicide provisions and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, according to The News Minute. 

The Crime Branch, which has taken over the case, has made no formal statement. IIT Bombay had already apologised for its first account, which said Sahil was caught cheating and trying to use ChatGPT to get answers.

Watch the clips, and there is nothing in them that settles anything. What the object is cannot be seen definitively. What was said cannot be heard; there is no audio in the clip. 

Certainty by degrees

In the first segment, News18’s Anand Narasimhan began with caution. “We still have to identify,” he said as the first pictures ran. Reporter Ananya Gupta said the answer would come from the police: “Those details will follow from the Mumbai Police.” Later she asked, of the object Sahil handed over, “What exactly was it?” By about six minutes in, Narasimhan was describing what was under Sahil’s “right thigh” as something that “looks like a phone or an instrument”.

Then the hedges fell away. Narasimhan called the clips “clear visual evidence of what actually transpired”. Executive editor Shawan Sen said it was “abundantly clear that this is a clear-cut case of cheating in which the invigilator has basically acted as per rules”. News editor Mayuresh Ganapatye said that what the channel’s police sources had been saying “has now been proven”, which is the channel certifying its own leaks. Gupta added: “Nobody has to say anything, nobody has to prove anything.” Less than a minute earlier she had called the inquiry “preliminary”.

Narasimhan described the longer clip as showing several invigilators in the hall. In his telling, Doolla, one of them, stands in front of Sahil and follows him as he walks out, then returns and watches him. Sahil takes something from under his right thigh, “a short black object”, and hands it over.

The New Indian Express, citing an anonymous Mumbai Police Crime Branch officer, reported the same day that the footage “does not clearly establish” ChatGPT use, that the phone is headed for a forensic audit, and that a “verbal confrontation” followed when Doolla took Sahil aside. Narasimhan said: “There is no admonition, nothing being said,” though he also said Doolla “seems to have said” to hand over whatever Sahil had. 

Nobody on air said who supplied the clips or whether they were complete. Narasimhan conceded that investigators hold “the full sequence”.

‘No tamasha’

The channel’s argument was about what didn’t happen. “If he was individually targeting Sahil, he would have made a scene,” Narasimhan said, concluding that Doolla had “no mala fide intent”. A quiet exchange in an exam hall says little about months of alleged conduct outside the frame.

Sahil’s parents, Ravindra and Sonali Wakode, told the Indian Express that he had spoken to them of casteist remarks and “torture” on campus, and that the discrimination began in his second year. They advised him to ignore it, advice they now regret, and they have demanded the arrest of Doolla and the institute’s director, Shireesh Kedare. Asked about the cheating claim, Ravindra said it “should be proven by investigation”.

A report in The Wire, citing students and a parent, alleges a pattern of harsh punishment by Doolla. It reports fines of Rs 1.2 lakh and Rs 40,000 on students over a 2024 campus play, and eight- and 13-month suspensions of two PhD scholars who allegedly spoke to the press, one of them a Dalit student still contesting his case in the Bombay High Court.

The family’s allegations did surface on air, but only to be dismissed. Sen said the parents had alleged “torture and mental harassment” and that the family had provided the police nothing, according to what he “was told”. He did not say by whom. The Wire’s and other accounts of Doolla's past conduct on social media were not raised. What viewers got instead was the second segment, with anchor Rahul Shivshankar dwelling on Doolla’s awards, degrees and a 2024 email urging students never to discriminate.

Absence as evidence

Sen said there was “not a single complaint” in three months, citing the institute’s SC/ST cell. Narasimhan said a call Sahil allegedly made after leaving the hall, on which the Mumbai Police has said nothing officially, showed he “never hinted at being targeted because of his caste”. Every source behind the “no complaint” finding is institutional, and the institution’s first account has just been withdrawn. Sen even characterised the family’s version as “peddled”. 

The rulebook

IIT Bombay’s procedure, excerpts of which were shared on X by Suryakant Waghmore, a professor of sociology at IIT Bombay, says an invigilator who finds indiscipline should confiscate the material, issue a fresh answer book, let the student resume writing and send a note to the Head of Department. 

A disciplinary committee then sifts the evidence, and “in case the evidence is not clear, the benefit of doubt goes to the student.”

Sen, however, said on News18 that Doolla acted “as per rules”. The channel’s own account of what happened in the hall shifts as it goes. Narasimhan said Doolla asked Sahil to “give up his papers”, after which Sahil was “seen folding up his bags” and walking out. Yet he also said Sahil “sits down and writes for some more time before he gets up and goes out”, and earlier asked whether Sahil “was allowed to continue writing the paper”. His closing summary had Sahil, “after some time”, folding his paper, handing it over and walking out. The procedure says the student should be allowed to resume on a fresh answer book, with a note going to the Head of Department. Narasimhan described the protocol differently: “You catch a student, you pick the student, ask the student to walk out.” Nobody on air said whether Sahil was offered a fresh answer book.

The institute’s own first statement said no disciplinary action had been initiated, so the body meant to establish whether malpractice occurred had not done so. Some professors on campus are asking whether protocol was followed at all. The cheating allegation has not been proven by any stretch, yet the channel treated it as closed.

The studio

Shivshankar opened by calling the accusations “the narrative”, the SC/ST Act “a draconian law” and the response to Doolla “literally a witch hunt”. 

He said the channel doesn’t “stand in judgment” of either man, then said “we have the CCTV footage to tell us that those accusations were wrong”, though the clip has no audio and the accusations concern what Doolla did and said, on that day or others. Seconds after describing Sahil as “trying to seek assistance” rather than calling it cheating, Shivshankar said he would “stay away from using a word which is value loaded”. He then called Doolla’s critics “vultures, opportunists” who were “not on the side of this country”.

Reporter Nabila Jamal credited the channel’s “rolling coverage” which she characterises as “objective” for a shift on campus, saying students who had protested against Doolla “have now switched sides”, while noting that two camps remained, seated opposite each other. She also reported that police had allegedly questioned six of the 17 students visible in the clip and that “all six of them said Professor Doolla said nothing to Sahil”, then had Doolla asking Sahil “what are you doing”. Her closing line, “so far no concrete evidence of any kind of caste discrimination”, came as she said investigators were still establishing what happened after Sahil left the hall.

A suicide, reported

WHO guidelines on suicide reporting advise against assigning a single cause or speculating about a person’s last hours. The Press Council separately warns against depicting the deceased as having “a weak character” or intruding on their privacy, and against coverage that “causes prejudice to an ongoing inquiry/investigation” by “pronouncing on the merits of the case”. 

In the first segment, Narasimhan asked whether Sahil had said he’d “goofed up big time” after he had “bungled up his previous paper”, and Gupta said Sahil had told a friend that “a goof-up had happened”. In the second, Jamal went into the hours after Sahil left the hall: his call to his girlfriend around 2:30 pm, what she had reportedly told police he said, and “that period of 1 hour”. More than once Shivshankar said Sahil “committed suicide”, a phrasing a first-year journalism student knows not to use. 

The broadcasts also fare poorly against the regulatory standards the channel operates under. Rule 6(1)(d) of the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994 bars “deliberate, false and suggestive innuendos and half truths”, and Rule 6(1)(i) bars content that maligns or slanders any individual. The police have established nothing so far, yet the channel presented conjecture as established fact and cast aspersions on Sahil and on those who questioned Doolla’s conduct before any finding of wrongdoing. Whether that was deliberate is for the regulator to judge, but it is the kind of content the Code is written to prevent.

Whose trial is this?

Even if the clips showed a phone, that would not settle the case against Doolla. The FIR was registered on the parents’ complaint of caste-based discrimination and does not depend on proof that Sahil cheated. 

The clip, whatever it shows, covers one exam on one day; the case concerns how Doolla treated Sahil, in the hall and outside it.

Yet both segments spent their time on a dead student who can’t defend himself. IIT Bombay’s first statement set the frame, and the channel ran with it. A young man who could not answer was put on trial, and the verdict was used to clear the man under investigation. That is not merely a media trial; it looks a lot like victim blaming. 

The questions that matter are the ones the channel answered without evidence. How did Doolla handle a student he suspected of malpractice? Did Sahil get the process the rulebook describes, including the benefit of the doubt? Did casteism deny him protections that other students get in the same situation? Answering that would need records of how earlier malpractice cases were handled. A section of the student community is asking for something related but different: publication of reports on previous student suicides on campus, and clarity on the procedure in exam-malpractice cases.

One comparison exists, though it cannot show whether Sahil was treated differently. On September 24, the Times of India reported a professor’s social-media note describing a colleague’s handling of a case last year, in which a student was caught with a smartphone and smartwatch during an exam. According to the report, the phone was collected and the student was allowed to continue writing. Only his faculty adviser and the head of department were told. The student was asked whether it would be acceptable to award zero marks for the sections completed on the phone, and was subsequently asked to submit an apology and a written assurance against future malpractice.

Where it stands

However, News18 wasn’t the only channel to jump on the leaked CCTV footage. Outlets such as Times Now, Republic TV, and NDTV also amplified it and pushed similar narratives. 

If News18’s coverage was bad, NDTV went further, pressing a grieving father to incriminate his dead son while the police investigation was still open. On September 24, as Sahil’s parents began a hunger strike demanding justice for their son, NDTV’s Padmaja Joshi interviewed them, though it was Ravindra who answered. Rather than opening by simply asking what their demands were, she began with the CCTV footage: “We could see something in his hands, and what would you like to say about it?” It was the same unresolved object this piece has already noted nobody, on News18 or elsewhere, has identified.

Sahil’s father, Ravindra, said this was a matter for the investigation (“jaanch ka maamla hai, madam”), declined to say more, and questioned the selective nature of the leaks. Joshi pressed on: “After watching this video, why do you feel some kind of injustice was done to him? Because it appears here that something went wrong. What do you think about this video? What happened in it?” (“Par iss video ko dekhne ke baad, aapko kyun lag raha hai ki unke saath kisi tarah ki zyati hui thi? Kyunki yahan par dikh raha hai ki yahan kuch galat hua tha? Aapko is video ke barein mein kya lagta hai? Kya hua isme?”) Ravindra held his position, again questioning the selective leaks and saying the investigative agencies would establish what happened.

That wasn’t enough for Joshi, who kept asking what they thought was in Sahil’s hands in the video. Ravindra repeated that it was a matter for the investigating agencies, and that he had full faith in them.

Still, Joshi tried again: “It is being said that Sahil had a phone. Does the video show a phone, or something else?” (“Yeh kaha ja raha hai ki Sahil ke paas phone tha. Woh video mein phone dikh raha hai ya kuch aur?”) Ravindra repeated himself: “This is a matter for the investigation.” (“Yeh jaanch ka maamla hai.”)

She then asked why he was on a hunger strike if a police investigation was already under way. Ravindra said his demand was no longer a police investigation, but the arrest of Prof Doolla and, he said, of the institute’s director, a demand the piece has already noted his parents made in the days after Sahil’s death.

There is no denying that the footage is newsworthy. But just as Doolla is entitled to the presumption of innocence, Sahil deserved the benefit of the doubt that his institute’s own procedure promised. 

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