The Justice (retd.) AK Roopanwal Commission, which was constituted by the HRD Ministry to look into the circumstances leading to the death of Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad Central University, has said that personal frustration drove the Dalit scholar to commit suicide and that his mother faked their Dalit status.
The Justice Roopanwal Commission, in a report submitted to the Ministry, has given a clean chit to Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, sources said.
The university authorities too have been absolved of any blame for Vemula’s death, as the Commission held that they were not working under political pressure.
The one-man judicial commission was constituted on January 28 this year after Rohith Vemula hanged himself in a hostel room in the university campus. The 41-page report submitted by AK Roopanwal is based on the deposition of over 50 people, a majority of whom were university teachers, officers and staff members.
The commission, after the investigation, concluded that Radhika Vemula branded herself as a Mala (a scheduled caste community) and managed to get a certificate from the then corporator Uppalapati Danmma, someone who has lived with Radhika for over one and half years.
The commission cites Radhika’s application for her younger son Raja Chaitanya Kumar’s birth certificate in 2014 as evidence to prove that she doesn’t belong to a Dalit community. In that application, Radhika disclosed her caste as Vaddera, a backward class. Hence, the retired judge infers that since Radhika is not Mala, Rohith cannot be Mala either.
Following a huge political storm, the Roopanwal Commission had been formed by the HRD Ministry to look into the circumstances leading to the death of Vemula.
UoH scholar Vemula had committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling of a hostel room in the university on January 17, 2016.
The commission has also rejected a claim that the decision to expel Vemula and his batchmates was taken due to pressure. It also says that Union Ministers Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani were only discharging their duties.
In August, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) Chairman PL Punia had rejected the reported finding of the Roopanwal Commission that Rohith Vemula did not belong to the SC community and called it “totally wrong”.
