Saketh Sreenivasaiah, missing Indian UC Berkeley masters student found dead at Lake Anza after mental health breakdown. International student who was excelling as a chemical engineering graduate was feeling the strain unbeknownst at the time to roommate, Baneet Singh.
A UC Berkeley student from India who was reported missing was found dead, presumed drowned, five days later.
The body of Saketh Sreenivasaiah, a 22-year-old Indian graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was recovered Saturday by dive teams from Lake Anza after he went missing Feb. 9, according to student newspaper, The Daily Californian.
Sreenivasaiah, from Karnataka according to his Linkedin page was a 2025 IIT Madras chemical engineering graduate pursuing a master’s at UC Berkeley.
No foul play in death of missing International UC Berkeley student
At the time of his disappearance, the student was last seen near the Berkeley Hills lake, about 3 miles from campus. His backpack, containing his passport and laptop, was found on a nearby doorstep, sparking a multi-day search with sonar, drones and divers led by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
Divers located the body around 2 p.m. Feb. 14; no cause of death or foul play has been announced, with the Contra Costa County coroner taking over, the Hindustan Times reported.
The Indian Consulate General in San Francisco confirmed the recovery on social media, offering condolences and aid for repatriating remains to his family. ‘We extend our heartfelt condolences … (and stand) ready to provide all necessary assistance,’ the consulate posted on X.
International student mental health breakdown
In a post shared on Linkedin, roommate Baneet Singh described troubling signs in Sreenivasaiah’s final two weeks, noting he ate less, subsisted on chips and cookies, and withdrawing socially. In their last talk, Singh saw him return from class in a red bathrobe and asked why ‘I’ve stopped caring, man. I’m cold and don’t care what anyone thinks of me. I don’t care about anything,’ Sreenivasaiah replied, according to the student.
Singh laughed off the comment at that time. However, he now says it was indicative of Sreenivasaiah’s declining mental health.
‘Now I know that he really meant it. 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 said life as an international student is tough, with no earlier distress signals.
Sreenivasaiah, an alumnus of IIT Madras, had attended Bengaluru’s Sri Vani Education Centre for his schooling. He was one of six inventors to hold a patent for a “microchannel cooling system for hyperloop and a method thereof,” according to his LinkedIn profile. Friends and colleagues remember him as a person of quick wit, humility, brilliance, and loyalty.
