Delhi High Court Calls for Humane Reform in Legal Education: Mandatory Attendance Can’t Cost a Student’s Life

Introduction

The Delhi High Court has shown once more that justice is not just about punishing wrongs but also about fixing systems. In one of the most caring and far-reaching decisions about education in recent years, the Court ordered sweeping changes to higher and legal education across India in the case of Courts on its Own Motion in Re: Suicide Committed by Sushant Rohilla, W.P.(CRL) 793/2017 (decided on 03 November 2025).

The story at the center of the case is about a young and promising law student whose life was cut short by a rigid academic system that valued attendance over empathy.

The Human Tragedy that Moved the Nation

Sushant Rohilla, a 4th-year B.A. LL.B. student at Amity Law School in Delhi (then part of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University), killed himself in August 2016. Later, it became clear that the reason was not academic failure but institutional rigidity. Sushant was not allowed to take his sixth-semester exams because he had not been to enough classes, even though he had been hurt and could not go to class for good reasons.

The tragedy was even worse because Sushant was not just any student. He was the head of the debating society, a mooter, a mentor, and a lively person on campus. But when he tried to get answers, he ran into bureaucratic walls.

A letter from a close friend to the Chief Justice of India at the time changed everything. The letter went into detail about the emotional abuse Sushant went through and asked the courts to step in not just to get him justice, but also to protect thousands of other students who are going through the same things of stress, shame, and fear.

The Supreme Court took the letter as a suo motu petition in September 2016 because the issue was so serious. It then sent it to the Delhi High Court for a closer look at both institutional accountability and systemic reform.

The Legal Odyssey: Criminal and Civil Aspects

Along with the court case, a FIR was filed against the college’s leaders under Section 306 IPC (abetment of suicide). After looking into it, though, the Delhi Police Crime Branch didn’t find any direct evidence of provocation or conspiracy. In 2018, a closure report was filed, but Sushant’s sister protested by filing a petition.

The Delhi High Court, with Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Amit Sharma, knew that the tragedy raised questions that were much bigger than just who was guilty. So, the Court added more to the case to look at problems with the higher education system, especially when it comes to student welfare, mental health, and empathy at the institution.

The family and the institution came to an agreement outside of court by 2024. The Court agreed with this, but it wisely kept the writ petition alive so that it could keep looking into the case’s structural issues. This turned the case into a public interest proceeding on educational reform.

A Systemic Crisis: When Rules Take the Place of Reason

The Court found two big areas that need immediate reform:

1. Strict rules about attendance at universities, especially law schools.
2. Students don’t have good ways to deal with complaints or get help with their mental health.

The judges said that colleges and universities often act like attendance is a moral test instead of just a way to keep track of students. The Bar Council of India’s Legal Education Rules, 2008, say that students must attend at least 70% of their classes in order to take exams. This rule can only be relaxed to 65% in “exceptional circumstances.”

The Court did say, though, that this kind of strictness doesn’t fit with the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, which calls for flexibility, multidisciplinary approaches, and putting students first. The NEP focuses on teachers being present, not students, and it recognizes the value of online learning, self-study, and hands-on learning.

As the Court said, “Education must be enabling, not punitive.” Learning today takes place in classrooms, online platforms, internships, and community spaces; it cannot be quantified solely by physical presence.

Global and Institutional Models of Adaptability

The Court backed up its reasoning with examples from progressive institutions that combine strict academic standards with kindness:

1. BITS Pilani has a non-mandatory attendance policy because they trust students to take care of their own education.
2. IIFT Delhi doesn’t stop students from taking exams; instead, it gives them small punishments like lowering their grades.
3. A number of foreign universities have flexible credit-based systems that include extracurricular and experiential learning as part of the academic process.

These examples show that using attendance as a weapon does more harm than good. It breaks trust, makes mental health worse, and turns education into a scary business.

Judicial Directions: Change with Compassion

The Delhi High Court issued a series of landmark orders that change the way institutions and students interact with each other because they knew that reform was needed right away:

1. No student will be kept from taking tests just because they don’t show up enough.
2. Attendance limits set by BCI must not be higher than those set by BCI, and schools cannot make their own rules that are stricter.
3. Doing real legal work, like moot courts, debates, legal aid camps, and internships, must count toward attendance.
4. To avoid detentions at the last minute, students and parents must get weekly and monthly attendance notifications.
5. Extra classes, makeup assignments, or community service in place of attendance must be used as ameliorative measures.
6. Only small penalties, like a small mark deduction (up to 5%) or CGPA reduction (up to 0.33), can be given. However, students cannot be denied access to the exam.

The Court also put a stop to the BCI’s Biometric Attendance Circular (2024), saying that using technology to watch students could make them more anxious and make classrooms feel more like prisons than places to learn.

Mental Health and Responsibility of Institutions

The part of the judgment that is probably the most forward-thinking is the focus on student mental health. According to the UGC (Redressal of Grievances of Students) Regulations, 2023, the Court said that every college or university must set up a Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) to make sure that:

1. At least half of the committee members must be students who are fully involved, not just there to listen.
2. The composition makes sure that there is gender diversity and inclusion.
3. Every GRC has professional counselors and therapists who talk to each other regularly about the well-being of students.
4. During accreditation, the Bar Council of India must make sure that law schools have both working GRCs and good mental health support systems.

These steps show a big change in how things are done, from dealing with complaints in a bureaucratic way to creating a culture of empathy in institutions.

Finding a balance between discipline and respect

The judgment’s basic idea is simple but powerful: education must teach discipline without taking away people’s humanity. When applied without compassion, strict rules can ruin the lives of young people. The Court agreed that while attendance is important for participation, enforcing it must be done with care, understanding, and a focus on mental health.

“The right to appear in examinations cannot be arbitrarily curtailed by mechanical application of attendance rules,” the Court said in a moving way. The bench said that this kind of rigidity hurts both justice and education.

The Bigger Picture: Kindness as a Value in Education

The Sushant Rohilla case is not just a legal precedent; it is also a moral lesson. It tells policymakers, teachers, and regulators to remember that schools are not factories but ecosystems of young minds that are vulnerable, ambitious, and deeply affected by their surroundings.

The Delhi High Court has closed the long-standing gap between law and life by adding compassion to government. The decision is in line with the Constitution’s goals of protecting dignity, equality, and mental health.

The Court’s message is both timeless and timely: “Mandatory attendance cannot become mandatory suffering.”

The Delhi High Court has made sure that Sushant Rohilla’s story is not one of despair but one that leads to change by interpreting laws and regulations in a way that is kind to people. It has done this by changing the way we think about education so that rules serve students instead of the other way around.

Conclusion
The Sushant Rohilla judgment is a watershed in the evolution of Indian legal education. It compels universities and regulatory bodies to introspect on whether their systems uplift or oppress. It calls for empathy-driven reform, aligning national education with constitutional compassion. By transforming personal loss into institutional learning, the Court has shown that justice, when guided by humanity, can save lives.