Dalit student's suicide: Union ministers put pressure on VC, says TRS MP

Hyderabad, Jan 18 TRS MP K. Kavitha on Monday said the pressure by two union ministers on University of Hyderabad vice chancellor led to suspension of five Dalit research scholars and one of them committed suicide.

Terming the suicide of Rohith Vemula as "unfortunate', she said union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattetreya should not have intervened into the campus politics.

"He wrote to (union minister for human resources development) Smriti Irani in support of ABVP students and this brought pressure on the university vice chancellor and he suspended five students of Ambedkar Students Union," she said.

Kavitha, daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said for many days the suspended students had been staging protest in the open but neither the central ministers nor the university authorities came to their rescue.

The MP, who also heads a cultural organization Telangana Jagruti, said though the suspension had come to their knowledge, they did not want to interfere in student politics.

The organization, however, had expressed solidarity with the students fighting a legal battle against suspension.

Kavitha said Telangana Jagruti would extend all possible assistance to the family of Rohith, who hailed from Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh.