New Delhi: The judicial commission set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to probe the circumstances leading to Rohith Vemula’s suicide at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in January has claimed that the 26-year-old scholar did not belong to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community, and therefore, was not a Dalit.
According to a report in The Indian Express, former Allahabad High Court judge A K Roopanwal has submitted his report to the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the first week of August, in which he made these observations.
Roopanwal was appointed by former HRD Minister Smriti Irani. The HC judge’s report gives credence to the claims of Union Ministers Sushma Swaraj and Thawar Chand Gehlot, who had questioned the student’s caste identity. Sushma and Gehlot had both claimed that Vemula was from the Vaddera community — a caste which falls under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.
Moreover, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and HCU vice-chancellor Appa Rao were named in an FIR lodged by the police under the SC/ST Atrocities (Prevention) Act for abetting his suicide.
The Indian Express report says judge Roopanwal refused to confirm or deny to the media that Vemula was not a Dalit. New HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said he had not seen the judge’s report and would have to check before commenting.
Rohith Vemula’s brother Raja, however, rejected the observation of the judicial commission, stating that the family ‘lived like Dalits’ and were brought up among Dalits. He claimed that the family had been discriminated against all their lives.
Incidentally, Justice Roopanwal’s report is at odds with the report submitted by Guntur District Collector Kantilal Dande to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), who had said that Vemula indeed was a Dalit.
NCSC chairman PL Punia backed Dande, and said that there was no need for a new commission. He blamed the BJP for its ‘anti-Dalit mentality’ claiming the party wanted to protect its ministers at all costs.
In November 2015, the university’s executive council had expelled five students, all said to be Dalits, from the hostel and barred their access to public places on campus, for allegedly assaulting an ABVP leader. The controversy snowballed when Vemula committed suicide in a hostel room on January 17 this year.
Later, several members of Rohith Vemula's family had converted from Hinduism to Buddhism.
