Deceased University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula’s mother on Tuesday said she had decided to accept Rs 8 lakh from the college as compensation for her son’s death. Vemula had committed suicide on January 17, 2016.
Radhika Vemula said she had earlier refused to accept the money because she erroneously believed that it was being offered at the behest of Vice Chancellor Apparao Podile.
“I thought they were trying to buy my silence,” Radhika Vemula said. “However, upon the advice of all my legal and social supporters, I’ve learned that this money is being paid not at the the behest of Apparao but as per the orders of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.”
She said that the commission, under the leadership of PL Punia, had declared that Rohith Vemula was a Dalit. Radhika Vemula said that Punia had supported the Vemula family when he declared that the findings of the Roopanwal commission appointed by former Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani were “fake and fictitious”.
The HRD Ministry-appointed inquiry panel had said that Rohith Vemula did not commit suicide because he was expelled from the University of Hyderabad. Instead, it said that Vemula “had his own problems”.
Radhika Vemula said that she had written a note to the press because she did not want Apparao Podile to spread rumours that she had made a “secret deal” with the university and accepted compensation. “I will not rest until Apparao Podile and his masters in the Bharatiya Janata Party are punished for their crimes,” she added.
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