Hyderabad: The Gachibowli police which was investigating the suicide of University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula has filed a closure report in the matter. The police have absolved former University of Hyderabad (UoH) vice-chancellor Prof Appa Rao, and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders including ex-MLC Ram Chander Rao and ex-BJP minister Bandaru Dattatreya in the case.
The report is to be submitted to the Telangana High Court on Friday, May 3, also surprisingly says that Rohith Vemula is not a Dalit or that he doesn’t belong to the Scheduled Caste (SC) category. Moreover, it also claims that his family had forged caste certificates without providing evidence for the same. It is pertinent to note that the closure report comes now when the Congress is ruling Telangana.
In 2016 it was none other than ex-Congress president Rahul Gandhi who protested and demanded action against the accused. He had even visited UoH and held sit-in protests, and the Congress had then supported the ‘Justice for Vemula campaign’ in 2016 after Rohith Vemula died by suicide and protests erupted in the UoH campus. Rohith’s mother Radhika Vemula was even asked to join the Congress during Gandhi’s recent Bharat Jodo Yatra.
It may also be recalled that Rahul Gandhi himself said that the ‘Rohith Vemula Act’ would be implemented to safeguard SC, Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minorities. So far, the Congress has not commented on the matter.
The police closure report says that Rohith took his own life over supposed fears of his caste status being revealed and that it may be one of Rohith’s fears that it could have resulted in loss of academic degrees or even prosecution. The report also stated that Rohith was “aware that he does not belong to the Scheduled Caste”.
However, it should be noted that Radhika Vemula has always maintained that she is an SC (Mala) by caste. Her life story is extraordinary and shows how difficult it is for one to navigate the clutches of the caste system. According to Rohith’s mother, she was raised in a Vaddera (Backward Class) household from her childhood. Her husband Mani Kumar also belonged to the same community and abandoned his family after finding out about their Dalit identity.
Background and suicide
Rohith died by suicide in January 2016, ending his life after days of protest by sitting out in the open along with four others for months after being evicted from their hostels in mid-2015. They were punished and asked to vacate their hostels after getting into an online altercation with an Akhila Bhartiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) member. While the ABVP member was let off, Rohith and his friends, who were in the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA), were punished.
This was predated by then Secunderabad MP and former minister Bandaru Dattatreya writing to then Union HRD minister Smriti Irani that “anti-national” activities were undertaken by students in UoH. That led to the administration also looking into the matter, and the altercation between ASA members and the ABVP member eventually ended up punishing Rohith and his friends.
Moreover, the UoH administration also barred the ASA students from access to their schools/departments and libraries apart from revoking access to their hostels and other public places. The police report interestingly justifies this by stating that it was done to ‘prevent them from committing further disturbance in the administrative block in the name of protest.’
The punishment by the UoH administration to the ASA students was upheld in December 2015, after which Rohith died by suicide on January 17. This led to a huge uproar and massive protests by students. A case was registered against former UoH VC Appa Rao, Dattatreya, ex-BJP MLA Ram Chander Rao, and others, alleging that they also played a part in Rohith’s death.
In a letter that he left, Rohith wrote many things, but also that he blamed no one for taking his own life. However, before that, he had written a sarcastic letter to Appa Rao over the treatment meted out to Dalit students in UoH.
“Please serve 10 mg of Sodium Azide to all Dalit students at the time of admission with directions to use when they feel like reading Ambedkar. Supply a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students from a companion, the great Chief Warden,” Rohith had stated.
