Hyderabad: CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury has urged the Telangana state government to release UoH students arrested on Tuesday and that the cases against them be dropped.
He wanted Prof. Appa Rao Podile to be sacked as the university’s vice-chancellor. Expressing anguish and anger over Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao ignoring his phone calls and messages on Tuesday’s
UoH incidents, Mr Yechury shot off a letter to Mr Chandrasekhar Rao.
“In the fitness of living up to your own proclamations and assurances, the arrested students must be released immediately and the cases against them must be dropped. The TS police must proceed on the cases registered against the vice-chancellor,” he said.
“I have tried in vain to contact you over phone the whole day. Several messages were left with your staff, but there was no response. Having thus failed, I am writing this letter. I am writing this letter with a sense of anguish and anger,” he said in the letter. The CPM leader flayed police brutality towards girl students too and their use of foul language.
“The manner in which the girl students were attacked by the male police with the liberal usage of foul language against them is reprehensible. Following the stoppage of water connection, access to wifi, food supplies to the hostel messes, the students themselves organised the preparation of food for the hostel inmates. Today, all these facilities were attacked by the police and the vice-chancellor has reportedly shut down the hostels,’’ he said.
The vice-chancellor who proceeded on leave following the suicide of Rohith Vemula was booked on charges of aiding and abetting the suicide by creating the circumstances leading to the tragedy. “Instead of proceeding against the vice-chancellor on this case, the Telangana state police have resorted to such brutality against the students,” he said.
