Rohith Vemula’s suicide: Fresh protests in 3 cities

Fresh protests by students broke out on Wednesday in Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai over the alleged “delay in justice” to the Hyderabad university dalit scholar who committed suicide, as they remained unrelenting in the demand for the resignations of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya.

Lending further support to the stir over Rohith Vemula’s suicide, SC and ST teachers of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) announced a hungerstrike from Thursday seeking the resignation of vice-chancellor Appa Rao, who has gone on leave, and interim VC Vipin Srivastava for the resumption of academic and administrative work. Several members of the forum have already given up their administrative responsibilities.

Stepping up their campaign, the university students in Hyderabad held a demonstration outside the residence of Mr Srivastava when he was in a meeting with non-teaching staff. They then marched outside the campus and burnt an effigy of the vice-chancellor. Mr Srivastava later visited the protest site to initiate a dialogue but faced the ire of the students who raised slogans against him, asking him to “go back”.

Students in most universities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana boycotted classes in solidarity with agitators seeking “justice” for Rohith who was found hanging in a hostel room on January 17. The HCU students had given a nationwide university strike call on Wednesday in support for their stir. Six of the seven students of the HCU on hungerstrike, meanwhile, have been shifted to the health centre.

In Delhi, scores of students from varsities across the city again marched to the HRD ministry where 60 of them were detained by the Delhi police. “Every time we try to go to the ministry and raise our demands with HRD minister Smriti Irani, we are held back and detained by police,” JNU Students’ Union vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said. In Chennai, about 40 activists of the Revolutionary Students and Youth Front were detained for trying to picket Raj Bhavan.