HYDERABAD: Asserting that the Cyberabad Police had submitted the closure report to tarnish the image of her scholar son, Radhika Vemula, mother of Rohith Vemula, demanded a full-fledged reinvestigation into her son’s suicide case.
Radhika was speaking at a press meet organised by the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at the University of Hyderabad on Saturday evening, following her meeting with Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy earlier in the day, where she pressed for justice for her son.
Radhika, along with students of University of Hyderabad (UOH), submitted a representation to the CM, stating: “The observations in the report clearly indicate the falsification of facts and highhandedness of the investigating officers.”
Calling her son’s suicide an ‘institutional murder’, Radhika said, “My son was a topper in the university and always excelled in academics. He was a hard-working, sincere and positively motivated young man, who believed in the ideology of social justice and strove for the cause even while he was pursuing his PhD in the university. Those calling his Dalit status as fraudulent and that his interests lay not in academics but in politics, have left no stone unturned to twist the facts and ensure that the truth behind my son’s suicide will never come to light. A person with such strong morale was pushed to take his own life and then declared as a fraudster. This is really heart-breaking and disgusting.”
Radhika further said that she met the CM to request a fair inquiry and reinvestigation into the case and also withdraw cases against students and faculty members of UoH who were involved in the Rohith Vemula movement. She expressed gratitude for his assurance of justice in the case.
It may be recalled that Telangana DGP Ravi Gupta on Friday stated that as some doubts were expressed by the mother of Rohith Vemula on the investigation, it was decided to conduct further investigation into the case.
More than eight years after Rohith’s suicide in January 2016, which sparked widespread protests across the nation, the police, in their closure report before the Telangana High Court, stated the reasons for suicide were personal and no one abetted it. The deceased himself was aware that he did not belong to SC. This could be one of the constant fears as the exposure of the same would put him to loss of his academic degrees, the report said.
ASA members also criticised the university administration and said that all the evidence indicating Rohith was coerced into suicide had been overlooked by the investigation officer and the other authorities concerned to protect the then vice-chancellor P Appa Rao, the then Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya and former HRD minister Smriti Irani and former BJP MLC N Ramachandra Rao.
“It is crucial to understand what unfolded in the one month before Rohith’s suicide, when he was subjected to atrocities by the then VC. He was barred from public places in the campus and the university hostel for his entire course work duration, and not just for a few months, as has been reported. We condemn the narrative set by the BJP, RSS and the ABVP through the closure report and look forward to a fair investigation by the government,” said an ASA member.
‘No stone left unturned to twist facts’
Those calling Rohith’s Dalit status as fraudulent and that his interests lay not in academics but in politics, have left no stone unturned to twist the facts and ensure that the truth behind my son’s suicide will never come to light, says Radhika Vemula
