On the same day, seven students who have been on hunger strike since Vemula’s death were taken to the hospital and another set of seven students took their place to continue the agitation. A group of another seven students today sat on an indefinite hunger strike. “So we have chose to continue our hunger strike despite removal of the earlier batch”, K P Zuhail, president of HCU Student Union, said in Hyderabad.
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“The environment in which Rohith was forced to kill himself is faced by millions of Dalit students who manage to reach higher education with great difficulty in our country”, he said.
The HRD ministry is vividly shaken by the stormy response to its diktat over central universities as the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student from Central University of Hyderabad, began to spread to other universities, especially JNU in Delhi.
On 23rd of January, in a move made very evidently to pacify the Dalit community, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, but his statements on Vemula’s death received flak from various sections.
Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary “Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai”.
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The students association has also demanded that the suspension of facilities to four students should be revoked. The FIR, issued by the Gachibowli police station, now names Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya, BJP MLC Ramachandra Rao and university vice-chancellor Apparao Podile on charges of abetment to suicide and atrocities against a Dalit. Meanwhile, the University offered Rs 8 lakh ex-gratia to Rohith’s family. “We can not be satisfied by a belated, delayed response and some emotional words expressed by the Prime Minister”, Sharma said.
