Rahul Gandhi should apologise for politicising Rohith Vemula’s death, says Sitharaman
The Telangana police on Friday filed a closure report on the death of Vemula, a University of Hyderabad student who died by suicide in 2016
A day after the Telangana police submitted its closure report on Rohith Vemula’s death case, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to apologise to the nation for politicising the incident.
Sitharaman, who was in Pune city on Saturday, said the university was not allowed to handle the case but instead protests were held on streets across the country, issue was raised in the Parliament and a narrative was built against the BJP government.
The Telangana police on Friday filed a closure report on the death of Vemula, a University of Hyderabad student who died by suicide in 2016.
According to the closure report, Vemula was not Dalit and died because he was “feeling frustrated” and over constant fears that his real caste identity would be discovered, the Telangana police told the high court, declaring its investigation closed.
However, as the 60-page closure report triggered a political row amid the ongoing Lok Sabha election campaign, the state police subsequently announced that they would seek the court’s permission to further investigate the case.
“Rahul Gandhi should say sorry to the nation and also apologise to the Scheduled Caste (SC) community. Now he is running ‘Mohabbat ki dukan’, but back then he was running ‘toxic dukan,” said Sitharaman.
She used the phrase ‘toxicity ki dukaan’ to take a dig at Gandhi’s usage of ‘Mohobbat ki dukaan’ during his last year’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The report, signed by assistant commissioner of police CH Sreekanth, also cleared a host of accused – ranging from then vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile, then Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatreya, university administration and leaders from the BJP and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – of all charges, citing lack of evidence.
The Congress, which is ruling Telangana, along with Gandhi, had publicly stood by the Vemula family as protests raged in 2016. Gandhi even walked with Vemula’s mother, Radhika, during his first phase of the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Sitharaman said, “Intolerance, political interference and hate do not lie in the government but in the vested interest groups who don’t lose an opportunity to bring this toxin into centres of higher education... Vemula had his dignity to be respected...”
