Under fire, Bandaru Dattatreya says only forwarded students’ representation

The protesters also burned the effigies of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been charged with abetting the suicide of the Dalit student, and PM Narendra Modi.

The Minister said the two-member fact finding committee which was sent to the university by the Ministry will return tonight and file its report. “I also wrote that there were cases of rape and kidnapping occurring regularly besides allegations of illegal transfer of university land”, Rao told ANI.

Questions have been raised about the HRD ministry’s five letters, which have been blamed as one of the major reasons for the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student, which has snowballed into a massive political row. “Suicide of Rohit Vemula has nothing to do with Dalit issues or rights just because he was a Dalit”.

Dattatreya had written a letter to HRD Minister Smriti Irani after a clash between two student groups in the campus in which an ABVP leader Susheel Kumar was attacked.

Addressing the students at the campus, a combative Rahul demanded stringent action against those responsible for driving Rohit, a 26 year old science research scholar, to take the extreme step. The HRD minister pursued the matter with the vice-chancellor till the students were suspended for a second time. “On the 10th August 2015, I received a representation on the state of affairs in the University of Hyderabad which disturbed me greatly and I forwarded the same to the MOHRD”. I am in possession of a letter written by Shri Hanumantha Rao ji, Congress MP, on November 17, 2014. (But) She did not bother about my letter all these days.

Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani has made a “wrong statement” regarding the protests in Hyderabad Central University over the alleged suicide of a Dalit scholar and the ongoing row in the institution, student leaders spearheading the agitation claimed here today.

“It’s not a Dalit versus non-Dalit confrontation”, she said, adding there had been media debates suggesting that Vemula mentioned the names of people and organisations who forced him to commit suicide.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who visited the University of Hyderabad yesterday, said that the varsity Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya created the situation that made Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar studying there, kill himself.

Deepening the crisis in Hyderabad University, teachers belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Wednesday unanimously resolved to resign from all administrative posts in solidarity with students protesting the suspension of five students, one of whom committed suicide last Sunday.