“My name is Rohith Vemula. I came from Guntur. I am a Dalit,” says Rohith Vemula in a video (that emerged on Sunday) after he was asked to leave the University of Hyderabad hostel.
Twenty-six-year-old Vemula committed suicide on 17 January, 2016 after he and four other students were suspended from the hostel following a disciplinary action initiated by the university administration based on a complaint of an ABVP student leader lodged in August.
In the 1 minute 50 second video, Vemula says that his disagreements with ABVP were nothing new and they had been on since 2012. “The university has expelled us, and in the circular they mentioned that our presence anywhere in the campus will be seen as a criminal act,” he says.
“I am a son of an agricultural laborer,” he says, pausing to collect his words, and adds, “my mother raised us. I came to the university to study biotechnology, but I changed to social sciences because of my passion towards society,” he says.
Rohit’s friends said the video was shot days before he hanged himself in his hostel room in January this year.
Rohith, 26, killed himself days after he and four other students were suspended by the university and barred from its hostel.
Watch The Video Here:
A month before his death, he had written to the university’s vice chancellor Appa Rao about caste discrimination and said Dalit students should be given “a rope to hang themselves”.
The Justice Roopanwal Commission report, submitted earlier this month, said there is no proof that Vemula’s mother V Radhika belongs to the “Mala” Dalit community.
Rohit’s friends and sympathizers had blamed Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya for the tragic end of his life, but the commission report absolved them of the charge, saying they had not put any pressure on the university authorities to take any measure against Vemula.
Rohith Vemula’s friends told NDTV that they have released the video now as they could access it only recently from a laptop that had been seized by the police when they were arrested in March this year after protests.