Indian UC Berkeley graduate student found dead in lake

Saketh Sreenivasaiah, a 22-year-old Indian international student pursuing his master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, was found dead in Lake Anza at Tilden Regional Park on Feb. 14.

What happened: Sreenivasaiah, a native of Karnataka, India, had completed his undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras before enrolling in the chemical and biomolecular engineering master’s program at UC Berkeley. He was reported missing on Feb. 12. The Berkeley Police Department said he was last seen two days earlier on the 1700 block of Dwight Way. On Feb. 14, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office dive teams recovered his body from Lake Anza, about a 12-minute drive from campus. The Contra Costa County Coroner’s Office confirmed his identity on Feb. 16.

Final memories:  Authorities reported that Sreenivasaiah had been distressed over a relationship at the time of his disappearance. His roommate, Baneet Singh, reportedly wrote on LinkedIn that in the two weeks before he went missing, Sreenivasaiah had “started eating less and engaging less, only surviving on chips and cookies,” warning signs he says he missed at the time. Singh also recalled their last exchange, in which Sreenivasaiah returned from class in a red bathrobe and said, “I’ve stopped caring, man. I’m cold and don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I don’t care about anything.” Singh took that remark as typical silliness.

Looking back, Singh said the moment carried more weight than he realized. “The opposite of life was never death. It was indifference,” he noted. “I didn’t expect this from a friend who lived, ate, travelled, laughed and joked with me,” he added. The roommate, who called life as an international student “tough,” is now working with authorities to bring Sreenivasaiah’s family from India to the U.S. on an emergency visa.

Why this matters: Sreenivasaiah’s death arrives amid persisting concerns over mental health reporting in Asian and Asian American communities. According to a 2024 study, suicide is now the leading cause of death among AAPI youth, with rates doubling between 1999 and 2021 and claiming 4,747 lives.

Yet AAPI individuals remain among the least likely to seek help, a gap researchers have attributed to cultural stigma, limited awareness and a lack of culturally competent resources. That reluctance is also evident among children, where CDC data from 2021 showed only 4.4% of Asian children received mental health treatment that year, the lowest rate of any racial group, compared to 18.3% of white children.

The Indian Consulate has committed to returning Sreenivasaiah’s remains to India as soon as possible.