A day after Telangana separatists proved yet again that people of the region were in favour of a separate state, an engineering student took his life at the Osmania University campus. Eshan Reddy, an engineering student, immolated himself near the library building of the university. His charred body was spotted by passersby on Saturday and a suicide note was found.
Reddy, who was preparing for the GRE examination, had apparently taken an oath that he would sacrifice his life if Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) lost the election and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) candidates won. “I wished before Maisamma (a local goddess) that I would sacrifice my life if D Srinivas (PCC chief) and other Congress candidates were defeated in the elections and now I am fulfilling my wish,” Reddy said in his hand-written suicide note. In addition, he named several leaders of the Congress and the TDP as betrayers of Telangana, requesting the Telangana joint action committee to declare them as traitors.
Once news of Reddy’s suicide had spread, students gathered on campus and tension prevailed as police tried to disperse them. In his note, Reddy expressed that he didn’t want his body sent for post-mortem, asking instead that it be kept at the martyrs’ memorial for some time before taking being sent to his home town in Medak district.
The Hyderabad city police allowed the body to be taken out in procession to the martyrs’ memorial and then to Medak. Leaders of the TRS, including its chief K Chandrasekhara Rao, and senior leaders of the BJP reached the campus. KCR wept on seeing the charred body and requested students not to resort to suicides since the Telangana movement now “needs soldiers to fight with the centre to achieve the statehood to the region”.
