Kancha Gachibowli row: University of Hyderabad student gets bail

Hyderabad: One of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) students who was arrested for protesting against the razing of Kancha Gachibowli, Naveen Erram, was released from judicial custody here on Saturday, April 12. He was granted bail by the Telangana High Court in a case related to a students’ protest against the clearing of the 400-acre green land in Gachibowli, adjoining UoH.

Along with Naveen, Rohit Bondugula, an IoE postdoctoral fellow at the university, was also arrested. However, his status remains unclear, as he has not yet been released from custody.

Around 50 student were detained on March 30 for protesting against the clearing of the 400 Kancha Gachibowli land that was once under the possession of the University of Hyderabad on its eastern side. Naveen was arrested by the police on that night and remanded to judicial custody.

The University of Hyderabad scholar, who is pursuing a PhD at the Department of Political Science, is in his final stages and is writing his thesis for submission.

The police had maintained that Naveen was not a UoH student. However, the Students’ Union had contested the police version and termed it an attention diversion tactic.

The Telangana government on April 7 agreed to withdraw the cases booked against the University of Hyderabad (UoH) students in connection with the protest over tree felling on 400 acres of land at Kancha Gachibowli near the university.

Deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka directed the police to withdraw the cases registered against the students.

He gave the directions during a meeting of the ministerial committee, comprising him, D Sridhar Babu and P Srinivasa Reddy, with the UoH Teachers’ Association and civil society groups at the state Secretariat.

The University of Hyderabad Teachers’ Association and civil society groups brought certain demands of the students to the notice of the committee. They demanded that the police force be withdrawn from the UoH campus and that prohibitory orders should be lifted. The demands included the withdrawal of all cases booked against students who participated in the protest and the immediate release of two students who are in judicial custody.

They also wanted permission to encourage faculty and researchers to undertake a damage assessment survey and gather biodiversity data on the land before the visit by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC).

It was brought to the notice of the ministerial committee that the students’ Joint Action Committee did not turn up for the meeting due to a lack of response from the government to their demands.