HYDERABAD: CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury today demanded immediate release of students and faculty members of Hyderabad Central University, arrested in connection with the attack on Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile's official residence.
Yechury, in a letter written to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, also alleged that police showed high-handedness as the students were deprived of water, access to wifi, and even food supply to hostel messes was stopped.
Cyberabad police today arrested 25 students and two teachers in connection with yesterday's incidents.
"In the fitness of living up to your own proclamations and assurances, the arrested students must be released immediately and the cases against them be dropped.
The Telangana police must immediately proceed on the registered cases against the Vice Chancellor. As this is a Central University, we are demanding of the Central Government that their appointed Vice Chancellor be removed forthwith," Yechury said.
Most people in the country were "aghast" at the manner in which such "brutal assault" was mounted on the university community by the Telangana police, Yechury said, adding he was forced to write the letter as there was no response from the CM despite repeated phone calls and messages. "Following the stoppage of water connection, access to wifi, food supplies to the hostel messes, the students themselves organised the preparation of food for the hostel inmates. Today, all these facilities were attacked by the police and the Vice Chancellor has reportedly shut down the hostels," he said.
Telangana government should act first against the Vice Chancellor who is named in the FIR filed with regard to Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide, Yechury added.