The body of Saketh Sreenivasaiah, a 22-year-old Indian graduate student at UC Berkeley who had been missing for five days, was recovered from Lake Anza on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, bringing a tragic end to a search that had mobilized authorities and shocked the academic community.
Sreenivasaiah, who was pursuing a master’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering, was found by dive teams from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office just after 2 p.m. Saturday, according to The Berkeley Scanner. The Consulate General of India in San Francisco confirmed his identity later that day.
The Search and Discovery
Sreenivasaiah was last seen on Feb. 9 near the Berkeley Hills, about three miles from campus, according to The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s student newspaper. He was reported missing on Feb. 10.
Authorities focused their search around Lake Anza in Tilden Regional Park after his backpack, containing his passport and laptop, was found near a residence close to the park, according to ABC7 San Francisco.
The Contra Costa County coroner’s office took over the case to determine the cause and manner of death, according to Press Democrat. Officials have not released an official cause of death, and there have been no reports of suspects or foul play at this time.
Warning Signs
In a poignant LinkedIn post Saturday afternoon, Sreenivasaiah’s roommate, Baneet Singh, revealed troubling signs he had missed in the weeks before his friend’s disappearance.
Singh wrote that over the past two weeks, Sreenivasaiah had “started eating less and engaging less, only surviving on chips and cookies,” according to The Daily Californian.
In their last conversation, Singh saw Sreenivasaiah return from class wearing a red bathrobe. When asked about it, Sreenivasaiah said, “I’ve stopped caring, man. I’m cold and don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I don’t care about anything,” according to The Daily Californian.
Singh said at the time he “laughed it off” and didn’t think much of it, according to The Berkeley Scanner.
“I didn’t expect this from a friend who lived, ate, travelled, laughed and joked with me,” Singh wrote, according to The Daily Californian. “it hurts. life as an international student is tough, man.”
Singh also revealed that on Jan. 21, less than three weeks before his disappearance, Sreenivasaiah had invited him to Lake Anza. “Now I know that he really meant it,” Singh wrote. “The opposite of life was never death, it was indifference. To stop caring. Which led to him not caring for his own life, either,” he concluded.
Singh told readers: “take this as a reminder to please reach out to your loved ones and make sure they’re okay,” according to The Daily Californian. Press Democrat reported that Sreenivasaiah had been considered at risk because he was reportedly upset about a relationship.
Who was Sreenivasaiah?
Sreenivasaiah was from Karnataka, India, and was an alumnus of IIT Madras, where he completed his B.Tech before moving to the United States for his postgraduate studies.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he was one of six inventors listed on a patent for a “microchannel cooling system for hyperloop and a method thereof.”
Friends and colleagues remembered him as a person of quick wit, humility, brilliance and loyalty, Vagabond reported.
The Spate of Indian Student Deaths
Sreenivasaiah’s death is part of a deeply troubling pattern. Between 2018 and 2024, at least 842 Indian students died abroad, with the United States reporting the highest number of fatalities at 141, according to data compiled by India’s Ministry of External Affairs and analyzed by Factly, an independent fact-checking organization.
The year 2024 witnessed a particularly alarming spike. In the first four months alone, at least 11 Indian students died in the United States.
The vast majority of these deaths — 96% — were attributed to medical causes, suicides, accidents and other non-violent causes, while only 4% resulted from violent attacks, according to Factly.
The year 2024 witnessed a particularly alarming spike. In the first four months alone, at least 11 Indian students died in the United States, according to The Wire. Seven of these deaths occurred in just the first six weeks of 2024, according to NBC News.
“All men 25 years old and under, two died by suicide, two died of overdoses, two were found dead after going missing, and one was beaten to death,” NBC News reported in February 2024.
The deaths included:
– Jan. 15, 2024: Two Indian students, G Dinesh (22) and Nikesh (21), were found dead in their Connecticut apartment from what authorities later determined were accidental fentanyl overdoses, according to ABC News and the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS).
– Jan. 20, 2024: Akul Dhawan (18), an Indian-American freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was found dead from hypothermia after being reported missing, according to Indian Diaspora and FIIDS.
– Jan. 22, 2024: Vivek Saini (25) was beaten to death with a hammer by a homeless man at a gas station in Lithonia, Georgia, where he worked part-time, according to India TV News and FIIDS.
– Jan. 28, 2024: Neel Acharya (19), a Purdue University student, was found dead near the campus airport. The coroner ruled his death an accident due to asphyxia, with cold temperatures and alcohol intoxication as contributing factors, according to ABC News.
– Feb. 1, 2024: Shreyas Reddy Benigeri (19), a University of Cincinnati student, was found dead in what the coroner ruled a suicide, according to ABC News.
– Feb. 5, 2024: Sameer Kamath (23), a Purdue University graduate student, was found dead from a gunshot wound in what authorities suspected was a self-inflicted suicide, according to FIIDS.
– Feb. 27, 2024: Amarnath Ghosh, a PhD student and Bharatnatyam dancer from Kolkata, was shot and killed by a local drug dealer while jogging in St. Louis, according FIIDS.
Community Alarm
“It felt like a pattern, like, why was it another Indian kid?” Virag Shah, then-president of Purdue University’s Indian Students Association, told NBC News in February 2024. “It just felt traumatic.”
Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told ABC News: “Deaths like the ones that these students have experienced, untimely ones, very unexpected, really shake the community.”
Mental health experts point to multiple factors contributing to the crisis among Indian international students.
“Students of Indian origin are people who are high achievers and they come from families with very high expectations,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), one of the few Indian Americans serving in Congress, told ABC News in March 2024.
Dr. Arpana Inman, who studies mental health in the South Asian community and is a dean at Rutgers University, told ABC News that “the intense academic and social pressures placed on young men and women in that community can lead to loneliness, substance abuse or suicidal thoughts.”
“I know there’s a lot of academic pressure to get good grades, go to good schools and also go within certain disciplines … and if students don’t go into those kinds of professions, then they’re seen as kind of not worth investing in,” Inman said, according to ABC News.
See Also
Cultural Stigma
Aadit Bennur, vice president of Purdue University’s Indian Student Association, told ABC News that cultural taboos may prevent students from seeking help.
“I think there’s also a bit of taboo, around speaking up about the pressures that people are facing, I think you just kind of like, shut up and keep pushing and try and get through it,” Bennur said, according to ABC News.
The stigma is reflected in statistics: Among adults with any mental illness, only 25% of Asian adults reported receiving mental health services compared to 52% of white adults in 2021, according to a study cited by ABC News.
Dr. Inman noted that the deaths could impact international students’ feelings of safety, according to ABC News. The isolation of being far from family and familiar cultural contexts compounds academic pressures.
Singh’s LinkedIn post captured this struggle: “life as an international student is tough, man,” he wrote, according to The Berkeley Scanner.
FIIDS Analysis and Recommendations
The Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS) analyzed the causes of Indian student deaths and found they range from suspicious shootings/kidnapping, environmental deaths due to lack of safety knowledge (carbon monoxide poisoning, hypothermia), mental health issues triggering suicides and violent crimes, according to FIIDS.
FIIDS submitted various recommendations to the Department of State, Department of Justice, Education Department, universities, student organizations and the Indo-American community, including:
– Mental health support for isolated young foreign students
– Safety education during new foreign student orientation
– Financial and job support for foreign students
– Investigation of potential hate crimes, as rumors circulated about suspicious patterns
“Even though FIIDS did not find any conclusive facts to support the rumors, they may need to be investigated to timely address their concerns,” FIIDS stated.
The crisis among Indian students abroad reflects broader mental health challenges in India itself.
According to Wikipedia, suicide is a major national public health issue in India, with 171,000 suicides recorded in 2022, a 4.2% increase over 2021 and a 27% jump compared to 2018. The rate of suicide per 100,000 population increased to 12.4 in 2022, the highest on record.
A study published in the PMC (PubMed Central) found notable increases in suicides among IIT JEE and NEET aspirants in recent years, with peaks in 2023 (41.8%) and 2024 (21.5%). The study noted temporal clustering particularly in August and September, “which may reflect broader societal changes, including increased academic competitiveness, evolving societal pressures, and shifts in educational policies affecting aspirants’ mental health.”
This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.