Hyderabad Central University student leader Raju Kumar Sahu resigned from the Students Federation of India.
Highlights
- Student leader quits Left-affiliated union at Hyderabad University
- Says agitation over Rohith Vemula's suicide has become "opportunistic"
- No justice yet for Rohith, says Raju Kumar Sahu in resignation letter
A leader of the Left-affiliated student's union SFI at the Hyderabad Central University, has resigned alleging that the agitation over the death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula is funded by political parties and has "become opportunistic."
The student, Raju Kumar Sahu, who has resigned from the Students Federation of India or SFI, said four months of protests have not helped get justice for
Rohith Vemula. He also alleged that, "the movement is funded by the Congress, Left and opportunistic forces."
"HCU students union secretary resigns and makes startling revelations. Left and Congress role exposed in Rohith Vemula's episode," tweeted union minister M Venkaiah Naidu of the BJP.
Rohith Vemula, 26, was found hanging in his hostel room at the university in early January this year. In a suicide note he said he did not blame anyone for his decision to kill himself. But a month before that, he had sent a despairing letter to the University's Vice Chancellor Appa Rao about caste discrimination and said Dalit students should be given "a rope to hang themselves".
Students at the university have been on protest since Rohith's death, demanding the dismissal of Mr Rao and action against Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandarau Dattatreya, who they accuse of hounding Mr Vemula and his friends based on a complaint filed by leaders of the ABVP, the BJP's student wing, who study at the same university.
Twenty-six-year-old Rohit Vemula, a PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Central University's hostel room in the campus.
The central government has denied that Mr Vemula and others were persecuted.
In his resignation letter, Mr Sahu has said that the "present state of affairs at SFI, HCU is murky," and also that "the politics of SFI is opportunistic and not based on principles."
The SFI has dismissed Mr Sahu's allegations and accused him of "parroting what the ABVP has been saying."