CCTV Inside Kerala Principal Office Shows Moments Before Dalit Student's Death

Days after Nithin Raj, a Dalit student, fell from the fifth floor of his college building and died, NDTV has accessed CCTV footage from inside the principal's room at Anjarakandy Dental College in Kerala's Kannur that captured the events that unfolded about 25 minutes before his death.

According to police sources, the footage shows teachers speaking to representatives of an instant loan app that had allegedly been making repeated recovery calls linked to a loan taken under Nithin Raj's name. The agent on the call is heard refusing to remove contact numbers of people connected to the student, including that of a professor, from the reference list until the payment is completed.

The visuals also show Nithin Raj explaining his situation to teachers inside the principal's room.

In another CCTV clip, Nithin Raj is seen walking away in tears - a development that investigators are treating as significant in reconstructing the sequence of events leading up to his death.

Teachers had earlier stated that Nithin Raj was called to the principal's office after they began receiving repeated calls from the recovery agent, which they described as persistent harassment.

A complaint had also been raised by a teacher regarding these calls.

Meanwhile, two teachers named as accused in the case, Dr Ram and Dr Sangeetha Nambiar, have approached the Thalassery Sessions Court seeking anticipatory bail, arguing that they had no role in the suicide and that threats from the loan app may have led to the student's death.

Nithin Raj, a Dalit from a daily wage labourer's family in Thiruvananthapuram, had secured a BDS seat at Anjarakandy Dental College in Kannur. On the afternoon of April 10, he fell from the fifth floor of his college building and died. What followed was a storm: audio clips of a young man describing caste-based humiliation by his professors, a loan app whose recovery agents had been threatening his teachers, a meeting in the principal's office, and a family that says they knew none of this was about money.

The parents held the caste-based ill treatment by teachers responsible for their son's death. But the latest police investigation has also revealed continuous harassment from a loan recovery app as a parallel thread that authorities are now probing.

Chakkarakkal police initially registered a case of unnatural death. By April 12, they added charges of abetment of suicide under Section 108 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and invoked the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The FIR was based on a complaint filed by Nithin's father, Rajan.

Kannur City Police Commissioner P Nidhinraj confirmed the formation of a Special Investigation Team headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police Hari Prasad, with cyber cell experts included in the team.