Rapid Action Force was called in at Hyderabad University campus on Tuesday afternoon as students protesting vice-chancellor Appa Rao’s return to work, following dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide on January 17, confined him to a room for nearly six hours.
Rao could move out only after the police used force and brought the situation under control by taking the agitators in custody. Meanwhile, the University issued a cheque of Rs 1.77 lakh to Rohith’s mother towards his arrears of scholarship.
The university authorities had stopped his scholarships for several months before he was suspended from the hostel in controversial circumstances. As the scholarship was only source of income for him and his mother, Rohith had pleaded in suicide note to his friends to help his mother by getting the scholarship money released.
The university authorities released the amount more than two months after his suicide.
Students staged a noisy and violent protest at the VC’s lodge and ransacked his office opposing his return to the campus. Window glass panes, office furniture and some other property was damaged in the stone pelting. Students went on a rampage pulling down shelves, damaging computers and vandalising the office completely.
Police said that both the house and the office of the VC became the target of the students’ attack forcing them to intervene. The students also clashed with the police and hurled stones at them injuring a few policemen.
Incident occurred as the VC had called a news conference at his office in the morning. Appa Rao had gone on an indefinite leave on January 24 after a Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula had committed suicide following his suspension and “social boycott”.
Vemula’s suicide by hanging on January 17 in a hostel room had triggered a prolonged strike both by the students and the staff demanding action against responsible for driving him to suicide.
With a big crowd of students gathering at the VC’s lodge in the HCU campus, the police rushed to the scene. Fearing that the situation may slip out of control the police used force and made a baton charge to disperse the protestors. Some students were taken in to custody.
Meanwhile Appa Rao rejected the demand for his resignation and removal. “A section of students can not dictate terms to me”, he said advising the agitators to come for talks on their issues. Expressing pain and anguish over the violent incidents, he said that those indulging in unruly behavior did not belong to any organisation.
Appa Rao said that he decided to return to his duties as the judicial inquiry ordered in to Rohith Vemula’s suicide was completed. He regretted that students were relying only on rumours and heresy to target him. “If any group of students is going to dictate who should be the Vice Chancellor, this will be a national problem tomorrow”, he said.
Apart from Appa Rao, the agitating students had also held two BJP ministers Smiriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya responsible for Vemula’s suicide sparking off a nation wide political row. The students had alleged that at the behest of BJP’s students wing ABVP, local minister Bandaru Dattatreya had written a letter to Human Resources Development minister Irani alleging that the university had turned in to a den of casteist and anti national politics.
later Smiriti Irani’s office sent a spate of five letters to HCU Vice Chancellor seeking the report of action against the students allegedly involved in attacking ABVP members.
It had led to suspension of Rohith Vemula and four other students from the hostel. On the day all the suspended students had gone on a hunger strike to demand revocation of their suspension Rohith hanged himself in a friend’s room in the hostel.
Tension was prevailing amid the reports that Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union President Kanhaiah Kumar was also likely to visit the campus to express his solidarity with the agitating students of HCU.
“Kanhaiah is a student of another university. Whether to allow him to visit the campus will be decided after consulting the other senior members of the university staff”, Appa Rao said.