Justice for Rohith Vemula: Students, faculty burn Roopanwal Commission report

Students and faculty members of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), gathered under the banner of ‘Justice For Rohith Vemula,’ on Thursday. They were there to condemn the Ashok Kumar Roopanwal Commission report on Rohith Vemula’s suicide last year. As a mark of protest, students burnt copies of report which claimed that research scholar Vemula was not in fact a Dalit as he identified himself, and that his death was due to the ambiguously worded “worldly affairs” and not administrative discrimination.

A one man commission headed by Justice Ashok Kumar Roopanwal was constituted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development after Vemula killed himself in the university on January 17, 2016. The report had been leaked to the media in October last year, garnering much outrage, but was only officially released now.

The students allege that the report is illegal, and politically motivated-suiting the interests of the BJP and operating solely with the purpose of exonerating Vice-Chancellor Podile Apparao, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Smriti Irani, BJP MLC Ramachandra Rao, former ABVP president Nandanam Susheel Kumar, former ABVP General Secretary Krishna Chaitanya along with several others. These people were named in the First Information Report registered under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act and Section 306 for causing humiliation, harassment, discrimination, insult, injustice and the institutional murder of Vemula.

“Roopanwal’s narration has suited the purpose of ABVP and BJP and going against material evidences available before the commission. As Rohith wrote in his last letter we were desperate to start our lives all the while, but when the effort of assertion and self respect came up, two union ministers including BJP MLC and bandwagon of BJYM and ABVP cadres came against the five of us. Fight for self respect by Dalits itself was a crime,” said Ambedkar Students’ Association leader, Dontha Prashanth.

Several students and teachers of the university had appealed to reject the report saying that the commission have clearly transgressed its Terms of Reference by investigating into the caste of Vemula even when it was not enlisted as terms of reference, which is impermissible and illegal.