Story of Rohith Vemula | Story behind Rohit vemula Death

Rohith Chakravarti Vemula was an Indian PhD student at the Hyderabad Central University. His suicide on 17 January 2016 sparked protests and outrage from across India and gained widespread media attention as an alleged case of discrimination against Dalits and backward classes in India in which elite educational institutions have been purportedly seen as an enduring vestige of caste-based discrimination against students belonging to “lower classes”. According to his suicide note, he committed suicide in the room of one Umma Anna, in whose room he was staying after being expelled from the hostel by the authorities at the Hyderabad Central University. His suicide occurred after an extended controversy which spread over a few months, starting July 2015 when the University reportedly stopped paying him the fellowship of ₹25,000 per month and expelled him from the hostel along with five others of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA). This was after the ABVP activist expressed objection to Rohith’s alleged protest againist the death penalty for Yakub Memon, a convict in 1993 Bombay bombings in which 257 people were killed. A university official however denied the allegation of non-payment of scholarship, blaming the delay on “paperwork” Rohith’s suicide has been called an “institutional murder” by many including Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, Sitaram Yechury of Communist Party of India (Marxist) , Kavita Krishan of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist), Dalit author and activist Meena Kandasamy.

On August 5, the university set up an inquiry against Rohith and four other ASA members, two days after they allegedly assaulted ABVP leader N Susheel Kumar. On August 17, Dattatreya wrote to HRD Minister urging action and claiming that the “Hyderabad University… has in the recent past, become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics”. After a series of flip-flops, the five were suspended in September. On December 17, the decision was upheld. On January 3, after the sanction was confirmed, the five moved out of their hostel rooms to a tent they set up inside the campus and began a “relay hunger protest”.

 

Source : Wiki