Dalit student suicide: FTII students sit on hunger strike

The suspension of five dalit students and the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad had its echoes in Pune’s Film and Technical Institute of India where students went on a hunger strike.

"(The students) have been viciously  targeted by the UoH administration and the right wing groups on a false complaint filed by Susheel Kumar, the president of ABVP, UoH, alleging he was attacked by 30 ASA students,” the FTII Students Association (FSA) said.

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“We recognise that this incident should be seen in the light of things happening all across the country in recent times. Minority communities are being attacked,  voices of dissent are being curtailed and Brahmanical ideology is being imposed on plural  cultural and educational spaces,” an FSA spokesperson said, condemning the police attack on students in Hyderabad.

“We hold the Brahmanical administrationof UoH, Bandaru Dattatreya, BJP MP and Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Smriti Irani, the minister of HRD, Sushil Kumar, ABVP president of UoH, Appa Rao Podile, VC of UoH and Prof Alok Pandey, the chief proctor who ordered for the suspension, responsible for the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula,” the spokesperson said and called for an independent probe into the incident.