26-year-old Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula committed suicide in a hostel room in Hyderabad Central University days after he was expelled from the hostel premises. Rohith was found hanging in another student’s room in the wee hours of January 18.

Rohith Vemula belonged to the Ambedkar Students’ Association at the University and he was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the central university administration in August 2016, after being accused of assaulting an ABVP student leader.

Since their expulsion, the students of the Ambedkar Students’ Association had been on a sleep-in strike in the open campus. A section of students had last week laid a siege to the Administrative Building of the HCU against the suspension of the research scholars.

The students under the umbrella of a Joint Action Committee 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.

Based on the recommendations of a sub-committee of the Executive Council, the five were denied access to hostels on the campus except their classrooms and workshops related to their subject of study.

The council had recommended the punishment based on a Proctorial Committee inquiry into the assault on the ABVP leader.

Union Minister for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya has been charged with abetment to suicide. A case has been filed by Hyderabad police under section 306A against Bandaru Dattatreya, University of Hyderabad Vice Chancellor Appa Rao, ABVP activist Susheel Kumar and his brother Vishnu.

Student groups across the country have called for protests after news came of Rohith’s suicide at the University.

Rohith’s Suicide note explaining his reasons for the extreme step:

Good morning,

I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.

I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.

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.

The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.

I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.

My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.

People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.

If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.

Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.

“From shadows to the stars.”

Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.

To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.

For one last time,

Jai Bheem

I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.