The 60-page closure report filed by the Telangana Police in the Rohith Vemula suicide case triggered angry reactions among students of the University of Hyderabad (UoH).
On Friday evening, students participated in a protest march from the quadrangle on campus to the main gate, raising slogans demanding justice. They said that they now have the option of approaching the lower courts for a protest petition.
Under duress?
“The report is outrageous and questions the whole movement. The closure report is problematic and dangerous as it blames anxiety and fear as the reasons why Rohith Vemula committed suicide. We condemn the report, and will restart the movement for justice again,” said Naresh, president of the Ambedkar Students’ Association. “There are a lot of claims in the report that are inaccurate and appear written under duress. We will raise them and fight till justice is done,” he said.
Rohith Vemula was a PhD scholar at the UoH who ended his life on January 17, 2016, after a series of disputed events ranging from stopping his stipend to screening a movie and fracas with other students.
Call for fact-finding committee
“We all feel that justice has been delayed, denied, and buried. Rahul Gandhi assured us that justice would be done. The present government in the State must appoint an independent fact-finding committee with civil society organisations as members to do justice to Rohith’s family members and punish the culprits,” said G. Kiran Kumar, a students’ union leader pursuing his PhD in the university.
In the immediate aftermath of the suicide, the campus and other campuses in the country had a series of protests. Mr. Gandhi visited the campus during a candlelight protest on January 29, 2016. During its 85th plenary in Chhattisgarh last year, the Congress party’s social justice resolution included enactment of a law called ‘Rohith Vemula Act’ to protect the rights of marginalised students.
“It is a horrible embarrassment for the Congress government in the State that had promised to act differently. I hope the government does a rethink. The police want to do the same thing that they did in the Disha encounter case where everyone is acquitted. This is a process of building impunity,” said Padmaja Shaw, former professor of Osmania University.
“I had a small hope that justice will prevail. We carry the hope. We will fight till we get justice. We built a great momentum that reached across the world. But that has been proved wrong. Our existence on campus is always a question mark in elite universities. Students want us to perform, government wants us to focus on studies and education but the system is stacked against us,” said an ex-student, who was part of the protests that unfolded in the UoH in 2016.
