Protests over the alleged suicide by a dalit research scholar escalated in Hyderabad and Delhi on Tuesday and also spread to other cities including Pune, Chennai and Gandhinagar with the incident bein
Protests over the alleged suicide by a dalit research scholar escalated in Hyderabad and Delhi on Tuesday and also spread to other cities including Pune, Chennai and Gandhinagar with the incident being described as an “institutional murder”.
The activists of TJYF (Telengana Jagruti Youth Front), a cultural outfit headed by TRS MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha, raised slogans outside the house of Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya at Ram Nagar in Hyderabad and blamed him for the death of Ph.D scholar Rohith Vemula from Hyderabad Central University, who was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday,
Holding placards, the protesters demanded that the minister, who has been booked in the case, should resign immediately.
“Thirty seven of the protesters were taken into preventive custody when they held a dharna near the Union minister’s house,” deputy commissioner of police (central zone) V.B. Kamalasan Reddy said.
On the university campus, scores of students, who intensified their protests, demanded that Mr Dattatreya, BJP MLC Ramchander Rao, university’s vice-chancellor P. Appa Rao and two ABVP leaders, against whom cases were registered for abetting suicide of Rohith, be jailed.
They held Mr Dattatreya and others responsible for Rohith’s death and took out a rally on the campus.
Telangana BJP spokesperson Prakash Reddy faced the wrath of agitating students at the HCU when he was leaving the campus after participating in a TV debate. A group of students rushed to Mr Reddy’s car and raised slogans against Mr Dattatreya and HRD minister Smriti Irani and his party. In the national capital, youth wings of various parties including AAP and Congress took to streets demanding resignation of Ms Irani and Mr Dattatreya.
The students of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune sat on a day-long hunger strike outside the institute’s gate in “solidarity” with the protesting students in Hyderabad.
In Gujarat, around 50 dalit students of Central University of Gujarat held a peaceful protest in Gandhinagar.
