Before suicide, Rohith Vemula wrote to varsity VC

'I request your highness to make euthanasia facility available' 

The Congress wants Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya sacked from the Cabinet after he was named in an FIR over the suicide of a Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad.
The 26-year-old Dalit scholar hanged himself in a hostel room on Sunday after his desperate pleas to reverse a varsity decision to expel him and four other Dalit students from the hostel and common areas got only deafening silence in response.
The Opposition said Vemula's suicide shows the "anti-Dalit mindset" of the Union government and the RSS

Vemula requested for "euthanasia" facility

Vemula wrote a stinging letter to the Hyderabad Central University vice-chancellor last month seeking euthanasia facilities for students, reports The Indian Express.
"First, let me praise your dedicated take on the self-respecting movement of Dalits in campus. When an ABVP president got questioned about his derogatory remarks on Dalits, your kind personal interference into the issue is historic and exemplary," Vemula wrote to V-C Prof P Appa Rao on 18 December, reports The Indian Express.
"I request your highness to make preparations for the facility 'euthanasia' for students," Vemula wrote in the same letter.
As protests gathered steam at the university and in Delhi, Union HRD minister Smriti Irani sent a two-member committee to Hyderabad to confirm facts about Rohith Vemula's suicide.

Criminal case against Dattatreya

The Cyberabad Police also booked vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile, BJP legislator Ramachandra Rao and two student leaders of the university under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 200 Rapid Force Action personnel battled student groups protesting the suicide on campus.
The police registered a criminal case against Dattatreya and others following separate complaints from the warden of the hostel and a student, Prashanth, who was among those expelled.
In his complaint, Prashanth blamed Dattatreya for "forcing" Vemula to end his life. Vemula and his fellow research scholars, all members of a dalit group, Ambedkar Students Association, were expelled in December last year for an alleged brawl with activists from the rival Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad over the July hanging of Yakub Memon in the Mumbai blast case.
"Now that an FIR has been registered against Union Minister Dattatreya and, the letter written by him prima facie amounts to abetment to suicide, the Congress demands that Dattatreya resign with immediate effect, failing which the Prime Minister should sack him immediately," Congress spokesperson R P N Singh said.

Source : msn