Dalit scholar suicide: Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Hyderabad University VC booked under SC/ST Act

Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Vice Chancellor of the Hyderabad Central University were on Monday booked under the SC/ST Act in connection with the suicide case of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula.

Students protesting at the University had demanded that the police register a case under the SC/ST Atrocity Act against Dattatreya, while alleging that he had written to the HRD ministry seeking action against Rohith Vemula and four other research scholars who had been suspended.

The body of V Rohit was found hanging at the Central University's hostel room in the campus on Sunday.

The students under the umbrella of a Joint Action Committee (JAC) had termed the suspension as "undemocratic" and as a "social boycott" since the five research scholars were denied access to hostels and were forced to sleep in a makeshift tent on the campus.

"I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt, Rohith Vemula wrote in his suicide note.

P.L. Punia, the chairman of National SC/ST commission, will visit University of Hyderabad to meet the protesting students.

Punia condoled the student's death and assured that his sacrifice would not go in vain. 

"Through the media we got to know that Dalit scholars and the students associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarti Parishad (ABVP) had a fight following which the university made a one-sided decision against the Dalit students. They were staging a protest since then and last night one of them committed suicide," Punia told ANI.