Until she turned to point at a stack of notebooks of her brother Nithin Raj, neatly bound on a table, Rekha had not faltered. For three days, she had been telling everyone who asked about her younger brother why she believed he must have fallen to his death at a dental college in Kannur on the afternoon of April 10. But as she turned the pages of his notebook, her voice broke. “Look at the handwriting of my little brother, look how neatly he kept his notes,” she said, pulling out book after book from his three years of NEET preparation.
RL Nithin Raj, a 22-year-old student who was in his first year of the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) course at the Anjarakandy Dental College, died on Friday, in a suspected case of suicide. According to his conversation with family and friends, and as per the accounts of several of his classmates, Nithin had faced relentless harassment and casteist discrimination from professor Dr MK Ram, the head of the Oral Pathology Department and Sangeetha Nambiar, an associate professor. They have now been accused of abetting the suicide, and also charged under provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act by the Kannur police.
“I am not sure what she [Sangeetha] did, but Ram used to harass him all the time. Some of it seemed casteist; he would have known Nithin’s was the merit seat for the SC community. The professor has been abusive towards other students as well – bodyshaming them, making colourist or casteist slurs, discriminatory towards those who did not come from well-to-do families, and so on. He had mocked my brother for his dark skin and asked him, ‘Have you seen yourself in a mirror? Do you know what you look like?” Rekha said.
She further said that her brother was insulted by Ram, who read out Nithin’s answer paper aloud in front of the whole class, pointing out his spelling mistakes and asking him if he knew English. “He had told my brother, ‘You are like a stray dog to me’. Other students have been calling me to talk about the offensive remarks he has made towards them. They say he would ask a girl about her gender, based on her looks, or ask a student wearing a burqa if she was a terrorist,” Rekha said.
Shifting narratives
Nithin had joined the course in September 2025. He was reluctant to take up BDS; his mind had been set on MBBS– a desire planted in childhood, because he would constantly hear his mother, Latha, say, “I will have my son trained to be a doctor.”
Nithin was the youngest of Rajan and Latha’s three children. The family lives in a modest house perched on top of a hill in Kottamala, near Nedumangad, 20 km away from the city of Thiruvananthapuram. Rekha is the eldest, and the second daughter is Nikhita. Both of them live in separate homes with their families. Only Rajan, Latha, and Nithin used to live in the house in Kottamala.
Nithin was really good in his studies, and Rajan had struggled to send him to a private school, getting him tuitions for different subjects in class 10, just so he got the best education they could afford. After Class 12, Nithin attended an institute for a year to prepare for NEET, and stayed home to prepare on his own the next two times. He was mostly home with his books and rarely spent time out with his friends, Rekha said.
Rajan works as a painting labourer, and Latha used to work for daily wages under the MGNREGA scheme (now called VB-G RAM G), until she became unwell.
On the morning of April 13–the day after Nithin was laid to rest–Latha was resting on a cot in the living room, with Rajan near her, tired and numb. They had both broken down multiple times as they tried to talk to the media about losing their son. As Rekha spoke to us from another room, Latha’s wails would occasionally rise, calling out “my son, my son”.
“She had lumps on her neck which got infected last December and needed treatment. It was Nithin who took care of her, taking her to hospitals, looking after her. He would scold me for not visiting more often to check on her,” Rekha recalled.
That morning, news reports emerged about a loan that Nithin had taken, using a mobile app, and a complaint given by one of his professors when the debtors called her repeatedly about the loan. The news appeared to shift the narrative, and questions were asked about the real reason behind Nithin’s death.
The family fears that this is a move to drown the incidents of harassment at the college, which they repeat is the real reason for their son’s death.
‘He was not afraid of loan; this is a cover-up’
Nithin’s family knew about the loan, Rekha said.
“It was for Rs 15,000 that he had originally taken to get some things for himself, and that my father promised to pay off later. But when my mother became unwell, Nithin used that money for her treatment. This was during Christmas break last year, when he was visiting home,” she explained.
On April 1, Nikhita, the other sister, had sent Rs 31,000 to Nithin so he could pay off the loan and get his anatomy kit for the upcoming exams. Rekha said that the kit itself came to Rs 25,000, and Nithin told them he could not pay off the loan, which, with interest, had come to Rs 20,000.
“If he were threatened by the debtors and feared them so badly, would he not have used the money my sister sent him to pay them off, before getting his kit. He was not afraid of them. When they demanded that he pay Rs 50,000 because of delayed repayment, he talked them down and said he was not going to pay so much for a loan of Rs 15,000. They agreed to make it Rs 20,000. We have the screenshots for all these; he would send us everything. This has just been brought up now because they [the college] want to cover up the harassment,” Rekha said.
The last time Rekha spoke to Nithin was on April 10, less than three hours before his death. He had called to ask if she could put Rs 220 on his account for getting food. They spoke merrily, and he had even made a joke about it, Rekha recalled.
At 2 pm on that day, a WhatsApp call came to Latha’s phone, telling her that her son had had an accident and was in the ICU.
“That’s all, they didn’t say anything more to my mother. She came crying to us, not knowing what had happened. We made many calls to find out what happened. Later, Nithin’s friend contacted my sister on Instagram, but only said there were injuries. We had not realised that my brother had died until relatives began pouring into our house, my brother-in-law grew quiet, and a relative called to say Nithin’s photo was being shown on TV. No one from the college had officially informed us about the death– not a student, not any of the staff,” Rekha said.
She and her sister Nikita had both been very close to Nithin. All three siblings used to get on a conference call almost every night, exchanging news from home and college.
“He had kept us informed about every little detail, all that happened in college. So we knew about the harassment he faced. He had tolerated it as much as he could, but towards the end, he lashed out at the professor,” Rekha said.
An audio clip and more students who spoke up
An audio clip, purportedly from Nithin, that was sent to his friends in college, in which he mentioned an ugly exchange with Professor Ram, had come out recently.
“He called me an idiot, and I said ‘same to you’ to him. You know that place where they do group attacks on you, called the staff room? That’s where this happened. He said he would chop off my limbs, and I’d have to live without my hands. I said let’s see, Sir. Sangeetha madam just looked on. Ajisha madam asked me to calm down. You all saw how he picked on me when I was simply sitting in his class, listening to the lecture. He made me stand up and insulted my mother and her surgery. He said he would cut my marks and that I could surprise my parents with it. So many others called me to say he has insulted them too,” said the voice on the clip, believed to be Nithin's.
The police have not yet confirmed the voice to be Nithin’s, but Rekha said she can identify it and that he had shared all of this with them, too.
This exchange with his professor had occurred in March. On the day of his death, Nithin was once again seen going to the staff room and looking anxious after that, according to a student of the college who called Rekha.
“A senior student called to say this. They had ragged him in the beginning, but harmlessly, like they did with every student, asking the juniors to wear full sleeve shirts or cut their hair short. Later on, it was these seniors who had been most supportive of him. None of Nithin’s classmates would speak for fear,” Rekha said.
But three days after his death, one of Nithin’s classmates, named Archa, spoke out. She said that all that Nithin had alleged against Professor Ram was true, adding that he would bodyshame many other students, including her, based on their appearance.
“He called me fatty, he would shame dark-skinned students, but tell a fair-skinned person that they look like Cinderella. Senior students have told us how they, too, had been traumatised by him and have often been on the verge of suicide. We are afraid to complain because we don’t know what he would do to us. He could fail us; he would always threaten us with low attendance. Nithin had always been a target; his paper was indeed read out in class. When he asked Nithin why his parents had not come for a meeting, Nithin said his mother had a surgery, and Sir said, but it was not for her legs, so why couldn't she use that to come,” Archa told the media.
Senior students also spoke out about the kind of insults Ram allegedly showered on them– calling them thin or fatty or lean or cockroach. One student alleged that the professor had also indulged in physical harassment, pulling the hair of a female student or hitting the beard of a male student, and making one student poke another on the head. If they did not hit well, he would ask them if they were ‘transgender or gay’, the student said.
The students have also told Rekha about an alleged suspension of the professor for similar complaints before, but this has not been verified yet. They have called for a protest and are boycotting classes until their complaints are addressed.
“Why has no action been taken against the professor, despite there being so many complaints against him? He has that kind of influence there. When he speaks, no other staff would say a thing,” Rekha said.
Rekha and Nikhita, Nithin’s elder sisters, could speak about all of it since they were constantly updated about his college life.
Grappling with grief, looking for answers
“It was I who had insisted that he take the dental course when he wanted to wait another year to try for MBBS. I told him he was getting older and he had to finish the course and get a job. Our mother was unwell, and our father was getting older. Last time, he got admission at JIPMER for nursing, but he had very much wanted to preface his name with ‘doctor’. This time, he had nearly joined a Pharmacy course in Pariyaram Medical College, but backed out after visiting it, feeling it was not for him. He might still have been alive if he stayed there,” Rekha said.
Everyone in the neighbourhood knew him and would only have good things to say about him, vouched the sister. A local CPI(M) worker, Anil Kumar, said he was a very good student. For his funeral, his schoolteachers had come, crying at the sight of his body.
“We only saw his covered-up body and an injury on his face. Another student who had seen him after the fall tells me there was a deep injury in his heart,” Rekha said.
A team from the State SC/ST Commission had come in the morning to take the statements of the family. By noon, a police official from the new Special Investigation Team, formed to investigate the crime, also came to meet the parents.
“My brother is gone, but we have to know why this happened to him,” Rekha said.
As the parents got ready to face the officials, Nikhita sat in another room with her cousins, and Rekha spoke to the visitors. Nithin’s two brothers-in-law, Ashok and Paul, who had gone to Kannur to bring his body home, tried to take care of the official procedures.
This is their time to grieve, but the bereaved family can’t seem to rest until they know the answer to why their youngest had to die, and until those who drove him to death are exposed.
If you are aware of anyone facing mental health issues or feeling suicidal, please provide help. Here are some helpline numbers of suicide-prevention organisations that can offer emotional support to individuals and families.
Kerala
Maithri: 0484 2540530
Chaithram: 0484 2361161
Both are 24-hour helpline numbers.
Tamil Nadu
State health department's suicide helpline: 104
Sneha Suicide Prevention Centre - 044-24640050 (listed as the sole suicide prevention helpline in Tamil Nadu)
Andhra Pradesh
Life Suicide Prevention: 78930 78930
Roshni: 9166202000, 9127848584
Karnataka
Sahai (24-hour): 080 65000111, 080 65000222
Telangana
State government's suicide prevention (tollfree): 104
Roshni: 040 66202000, 6620200
SEVA: 09441778290, 040 27504682 (between 9 am and 7 pm
Aasara offers support to individuals and families during an emotional crisis, for those dealing with mental health issues and suicidal ideation, and to those undergoing trauma after the suicide of a loved one.
24x7 Helpline: 9820466726
Click here for working helplines across India.