A number of people including students of University of Hyderabad (UoH), Dalit associations, right activists, lawyers and families of those who faced discrimination and violence have gathered on the UoH campus to mark the first anniversary of the death of Rohith Vemula. But the police team in charge of maintaining the law and order situation has barred the outsiders from entering the gate.
However, the University administrations had already said that the Joint Action Committee for Justice (JAC) had not permitted to organise any event in the campus.
Rohith’s mother Radhika Vemula; Jaan Mohammad Saifi, brother of Mohammad Akhlaq who was lynched by a mob in Dadri on suspicion of storing beef at home; Fatima Nafees, mother of missing JNU student Najeeb; Piyush Sarvaiya, whose brother Lallji Sarvaiya was burnt alive by an upper caste mob in 2011 in Una were also present in the crowd.
This day, last year, Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula, hanged himself to death with the banner of Ambedkar Students Association – the students’ group that he was a part of – after the University of Hyderabad suspended him along with four other students for allegedly assaulting ABVP leader N Susheel Kumar over a political dispute and stopped paying him his monthly stipend of Rs 25,000.
A month after his suicide, 1547 km away from Hyderabad, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi saw an uprise in students politics. There were slogans in air and demands for justice, Justice for Rohith, agitation against the oppressing government.
