Rohith Vemula was not Dalit, Telangana Police closes case; protest at HCU campus

Eight years after Rohith Vemula committed suicide in January 2016, the Telangana Police filed a closure report in the case giving a clean chit to then Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatreya, member of legislative council N Ramachander Rao, then vice-chancellor of Hyderabad Central University Appa Rao, ABVP leader and women and child development minister Smriti Irani, reports said.

In its closure report, the police said Rohit did not belong to the Scheduled Caste and committed suicide in fear of his real caste getting discovered.

After the closure report was filed, protests erupted at HCU.

Rohith Vemula was a PhD scholar at Hyderabad Central University who committed suicide on January 17, 2016 sparking national outrage on the account of caste atrocity. From July 2015, the university reportedly stopped paying his fellowship and a few months later, he was suspended after getting involved in a fight with some ABVP members.

Rohith Vemula left a suicide letter in which he called his birth a fatal accident. “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…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,” his letter read.

Rohith Vemula’s mother got him certificate: What closure report said

The police report said Rohith was aware that he did not belong to Scheduled Caste. “In addition to this, the deceased himself was aware that he did not belong to Scheduled Caste and that his mother got him a SC certificate. This could be one of the constant fears as the exposure of the same would result in a loss of his academic degrees that he earned over the years and be compelled to face prosecution,” the report said.

“The deceased had multiple issues worrying him which could have driven him to commit suicide,” the report added.

The closure report said the investigating officer asked Rohith Vemula’s mother whether she was willing to undergo a DNA test to determine her caste location. “She remained silent when I asked her whether she is willing to undergo a DNA test to compare with samples of her family members to determine whether they were biologically related to her or not,” the report said.

How Bandaru Dattatreya, HCU VC involved in the case

After a group of ‘Dalit’ students including Rohith Vemula clashed with an ABVP leader in 2015, Bandaru Dattatreya wrote to the HRD ministry saying that HCU was a mute spectator of the incident. Days before his suicide, Vemula wrote a letter to VC Appa Rao claiming harassment for being a Dalit student.

Smriti Irani in her press conference soon after Rohith Vemula’s suicide said he was not a Dalit.

Row over Rohith Vemula’s caste

That Rohith Vemula was not Dalit was earlier claimed by the Andhra Pradesh government which said Rohith belonged to the Vaddera OBC caste and wasn’t a Dalit. Rohith’s mother defended the caste status and said she was born into a Dalit family of migrant workers and was then adopted by an OBC family. She said she never knew her own parents and then was married off to an OBC family. But she was abandoned by her husband when her children were small.