NLU Delhi Deaths: HC Issues Notice Two Years After The Probe's Reports

On September 5, 2024, a day after Amrutavarshiny Senthil Kumar was found dead in her hostel at NLU Delhi, The Probe published the first of a series of reports on her death and on the campus she had lived on. She was 20, a third-year BA LLB (Honours) student from Chennai and an IDIA scholar. Students and faculty told us about harassment complaints that had not been properly addressed, caste-based lists circulating among students, and the treatment of those who had backed the "Seven Angry Women" movement against harassment, which she supported.

Also Read:  NLU Delhi Student Death Exposes Shocking Details

On September 7, we reported that the NLU Delhi Alumni Association's governing body had sought an urgent meeting with Vice Chancellor Prof G.S. Bajpai and put ten questions to the administration. On September 22, 2024, first-year student Shah Khushil Vishal died. The next day, we reported on an email he had sent to all BA LLB batches on August 4, which faculty and the administration knew about. The email, with the subject line "Lost will to survive", was an open plea for help sent seven weeks before he died, and it raised a question NLU Delhi has yet to answer: what did the university do once it knew?

On September 24, with her parents' consent, we published an essay Amrutavarshiny had written about being neurodivergent in law school. On September 30, we reported the death of first-year student Shreyashi Chandra, the third in a single month.

The Questions We Raised

Those reports raised questions that NLU Delhi has yet to answer convincingly. What did the administration do after Khushil's email? Why did complaints of harassment and caste discrimination not lead to visible action? What mental health support existed on a residential campus where three students died in under four weeks? We sought responses from the Vice Chancellor and Registrar Prof Ruhi Paul at the time.

In November 2024, the Delhi High Court closed a separate public interest litigation seeking an independent probe, after NLU Delhi said its inquiries had found "no direct nexus" between the deaths and the university or its curriculum, and that its Governing Council had agreed on preventive measures. The court said adequate steps had been taken "for the present".

Amrutavarshiny's parents, V. Sangeetha and K. Senthil Kumar, filed their own petition in May 2025. After 17 hearings, the court has now asked the university and the government to answer it.

What the Court Did

On September 28, 2026, a division bench of the Delhi High Court issued notice in V Sangeetha & Anr v National Law University Delhi & Ors, W.P.(C) 6294/2025. Notice has gone to NLU Delhi, the University Grants Commission, the Government of NCT of Delhi and the Union of India, which must now file replies.

The petition was first listed on May 13, 2025. On January 8, 2026, Justice Jasmeet Singh observed that it had large-scale ramifications and the character of a public interest litigation, and sent it to a division bench. On July 20, 2026, the division bench recorded NLU Delhi's undertaking to file an affidavit on its compliance with Supreme Court directions on student mental health. Notice was issued at the 17th listing.

The parents are represented by advocate Sushant Inderjeet Singh. Senior Advocate Raj Shekhar Rao has also appeared in the matter.

Also Read:  NLU Delhi: Another Student Death and an Explosive Email Trail

The Lawyer Behind the Case

Sushant Inderjeet Singh is himself an NLU Delhi graduate, with an LLM from London, and enrolled as an advocate in 2017. In September 2024, he sat on the alumni association's governing body and, as The Probe reported, wrote a strongly worded email to the NLU Delhi administration after Amrutavarshiny's death. By October 2024, her father had written to his office.

"I am very happy that the case is finally going to move forward," Singh told The Probe. "Our main prayer is to know what happened to Amrutavarshiny Senthil Kumar, in what circumstances she died, what support the university gave her and what the lapses were. These details are important to make sure that this does not happen again."

A Father Asks for His Daughter's Email

On October 14, 2024, forty days after her death, Senthil Kumar wrote to the Vice Chancellor's office. "This is senthil Kumar, amrutavarshiny's (3rd year BA LLB(honors) father from Chennai)," he wrote, giving her university email address. "I don't know the password. So kindly arrange to send me the same on immediate basis." He followed up the next day.

The Vice Chancellor's office forwarded his email to the Registrar. On October 18, Prof Ruhi Paul replied. "Passwords of students are confidential information. We do not keep a copy of student/user passwords," she wrote, and directed him to Google's process for the accounts of deceased users, which requires a death certificate and identity proof.

In court, the parents have asked that NLU Delhi be directed to give them access to their daughter's official email, academic records and institutional data. The petition says that although the post-mortem was carried out on September 5, 2024, they had still not received the report when they filed it.

'I Really, Really Need Help'

Some of what the family knows came from Amrutavarshiny's personal email account. Records seen by The Probe show two emails she had written months earlier were forwarded from it to her father weeks after her death. He sent both to Singh's office on October 13, 2024.

The first was sent on November 16, 2023, nearly 10 months before she died, to Tangent MHI, which offered pay-what-you-can therapy. "I come from a very volatile and weak financial environment," she wrote. "I got into law school through scholarships and financial aid, and it is the only reason I am able to afford a college education. I cannot, in good conscience, ask my parents to spend on my mental health." Further on, she wrote: "Recently, some incidents at college have been unbearable... I am really struggling, and I need help."

The email does not say what those incidents were. That is the question at the centre of her parents' case: what happened to their daughter at NLU Delhi?

On December 19, 2023, about eight and a half months before her death, she wrote to the counselling service of Mann Talks. "There have been other challenges at college, both academically and socially, instances of harassment at campus," she wrote. "My college is intensely academically rigorous and competitive, and CGPAs determine everything, including the quality of life one has at campus." The emails also describe personal difficulties, which The Probe has chosen not to publish. We do not know whether either organisation replied.

Here was a student who knew she needed help and looked for it outside her university twice in five weeks. Did NLU Delhi have a counsellor she could reach, and did she know about it? Was the harassment she described ever reported or recorded? Did the university have any way of noticing that a scholarship student was struggling?

Also Read:  NLU Delhi: A Heartfelt Piece by a Student Who Died Far Too Soon

What the Petition Says

The petition sets Amrutavarshiny's death within what it calls an "alarming pattern" of four alleged student suicides at NLU Delhi in 2024. It names Rohan Khanna, a fourth-year student, who it says died around July 2024; Amrutavarshiny on September 4; Shah Khushil Vishal on September 22; and Shreyashi Chandra on September 29. It says Khushil's email of August 4, sent at 4:48 pm with the subject line "Lost will to survive", went to every batch and was seen by faculty and the administration, yet "no adequate response or intervention" was recorded. Shreyashi, it says, wrote to all batches and faculty on the day she died. The petition also cites a suicide attempt by a Dalit student in 2018 and complaints by SC and ST students in 2019 of institutional discrimination.

It argues that the university, as a state-funded public institution, failed its duty under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution. It says all marks at NLU Delhi are awarded internally by faculty with no external moderation, that there is no academic appeals body, and that the university has not implemented UGC guidelines and the National Mental Health Policy. It says no independent fact-finding followed the deaths.

Amrutavarshiny, the petition says, was the only child of a schoolteacher who is the family's sole earner. She scored 95.8% in Class 10 and joined NLU Delhi through the All India Law Entrance Test (AILET) 2022 in the OBC category. She had already booked her train home to Chennai for Diwali. Seeking an urgent hearing, her parents warned of "a strong likelihood of recurrence of such incidents".

They seek national guidelines on campus mental health; an independent fact-finding committee, supervised by a retired or serving High Court or Supreme Court judge, into all the deaths, attempted suicides and self-harm at the university; reforms to its mental health and anti-harassment systems, including a counsellor from the Dalit-Bahujan community; and compensation of Rs 10 crore.

In July 2025, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta held in Sukdeb Saha v State of Andhra Pradesh that mental health is part of the right to life under Article 21. The court's 15 guidelines, binding on all educational institutions including universities, require those with 100 or more students to have at least one qualified counsellor, psychologist or social worker, and every institution to publish an annually reviewed mental health policy.

However, the Supreme Court's guidelines have not ended the crisis on law campuses. On February 24, 2026, an LLM student at Chanakya National Law University in Patna died by suicide in his hostel while mid-semester examinations were under way on campus. In late September 2026, a third-year student at Himachal Pradesh National Law University in Shimla attempted suicide after recording a video in which he said he was being harassed by batchmates and that the university had not acted on his complaints. The university said an inquiry into ragging complaints in the case was still under way and that no conclusions had been reached.

The Questions That Remain

NLU Delhi must now answer in court. What did its inquiries into the four deaths find, and will the families see those findings? What did it do after Khushil's email of August 4, 2024? What happened to Amrutavarshiny on campus in the months before her death? Has NLU Delhi complied with the Supreme Court's guidelines, how many counsellors serve its students, and is its mental health policy public? Will NLU Delhi give her parents access to their daughter's email and academic records, and will the authorities finally hand them the post-mortem report?

Her parents have waited more than two years to learn how their only child died. For the first time, NLU Delhi will have to formally answer them in court.

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. Call Tele-MANAS, the Union Health Ministry's free 24x7 mental health helpline, on 14416 or 1-800-891-4416.