As the circumstances that led to the death of Prosenjit Sarkar, a student of National Institute of Technology, Durgapur (NITD) continue to unravel, Prosenjit’s father, Mr. Parimal Sarkar, spoke exclusively to PaGaLGuY about Prosenjit’s medical history. “Prosenjit never had any health issues. He did complain of leg pain a few days ago, for which he was on medication.” said Mr. Sarkar. He added, “I am waiting for the post-mortem report to come so that the police can complete their investigation on the complaint that I have filed”. When asked about any help that the NITD authorities extended to the bereaved family, he said, “I have not received any communication from them regarding the incident.” He added that it is the students who have held on to the issue so that it gets properly addressed.
As reported earlier by PaGaLGuY (link), students have been demanding that the director of NITD, Dr. Tarkeshwar Kumar, should own responsibility for the incident. Students have also made an appeal on their Facebook page, ‘JourNIT’, and other Facebook pages started in response to the incident, asking for contributions to be made towards the compensation to be given to Prosenjit’s family.
Prosenjit’s death has created a lot of uproar in the student community inside as well as outside the NITD campus. The students’ campaign, tagged #justiceforprosenjit, has garnered over 3 Lakh tweets since the protests started. The same campaign was also responsible for getting HRD Minister Smriti Irani to take cognizance of the matter’s severity and send an MHRD team to investigate.