Kapil Sibal argues for Amity Law School in Sushant Rohilla suicide case

The oratorical skills of Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal were at play yesterday in the Delhi High Court where, within a span of 20 minutes, he changed the mood of the entire courtroom in case relating to law student Sushant Rohilla’s suicide. .The Court had taken suo moto cognizance of the incident and had earlier reprimanded Amity Law School (Rohilla’s law school) for shoddy investigation of the incident, wherein the student had committed suicide after the institution debarred him from appearing in the examinations due to low attendance..Kapil Sibal, appearing for Amity Law School, submitted that,.“We are an institution bound by the law and rules. If a student does not attend classes, what could have been the response of a college? The natural tendency of any institution would be that the student should not be allowed to appear for the examinations. This is what would have happened in any institution, be it a medical college or a law school. Kindly look at it from an academic point of view. We cannot be blamed for maintaining academic standards.”.Sibal further stated that different professors noted the attendance of the student, which came out to be 29 percent and it is not as if the attendance was marked at one particular point. He said,.“The minimum attendance required is 60 percent. So there is already a cushion of 30 percent. If the student does not attend even 60 percent of the classes and we promote the student anyway, someone else could file a petition and the Lordships would again ask us as to why we did so.”.Sibal also argued that the student was staying with his parents and not at the hostel. Therefore, his mental make up would have been known to the parents..“Parents would have been aware of his condition. Did they get in touch with us? No. Did his compatriots get in touch with us? No. How could have we known about his state of mind? If I got to know that my child was missing his classes, the first thing I would do is to ask him why is he missing classes and also I would meet with his teachers to know about the situation.”.The college informed everyone concerned, the student and his parents, on time. Sibal further stated that certain allegations, indicating animosity of some teachers towards the student, were ex post facto as nothing of that sort was mentioned in the suicide note..Concluding his arguments, Sibal stated that the institution is deeply saddened and that if collective blame is to be attributed, they were all to blame. However, to say that the student was discriminated against was not correct..The Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Najmi Waziri observed,.“There is no quarrel that you (institution) do owe a duty of care. The questions here are whether there were any systems in place to handle such a situation and whether something was actually done. Were the systems which were in place publicized to the student bodies, were they called upon and what was the response?” .The Bench further said,.“We can never ask you (the institution) to do something which is against the law. We want to examine the incident and see whether something could have been done to avert this and whether there were any administrative lapses. The student’s family and his compatriots also need closure.” .The Court then asked the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprashtha University and Amity Law School to produce the original files maintained in relation to the matter and also asked the Delhi Police to file the status report..The matter will be next heard on September 12..Image taken from here.