Days after Fathima Latheef, a first-year student of IIT-Madras, committed suicide in the hostel room, her parents and friends have come out with the allegation that humiliation and caste discrimination by IIT teachers had led to the suicide of their daughter.

Fathima, who was a first-year undergraduate student in the humanities stream, committed suicide by hanging from a ceiling fan in her hostel room on Saturday.

“From the time Fathima got admitted to the IIT, the teachers there used to discriminate her in the name of her religion. Some teachers were also unhappy to see her reaching first place in exams almost regularly,” her father Abdul Latheef alleged.

Fathima feared for her name and didn’t dare to wear purdah in college. According to her mother Sajitha, Fathima was not sent to Banaras Hindu University in Uttar Pradesh for fear of religious discrimination.

In Fathima’s mobile phone, which Latheef had procured from the police, it is said that she had noted the names of Madras IIT social studies/humanities teachers Sudarshan Padmanabhan, Hema Chandran Karah and Milind Brahme as the ones responsible for her death.

Fathima’s relatives said they feared whether the police would tamper with or destroy Fathima’s laptop and mobile phone. It is also alleged that during 2016, 17, 19 periods many student including Malayalis ended their life while studying in Madras IIT.

The parents alleged that the Tamil Nadu police had been taking the incident lightly, and on Tuesday they met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking support for a fair probe into the suicide case.

“The chief minister assured us that he would take up the matter with his Tamil Nadu counterpart,” said Fathima’s father Abdul Latheef at a press conference in Kollam.