10 years on, how Vemula’s death forced policy shifts| India News

The wall opposite is punctured by a grid of square vents letting the light slip in through disciplined squares. Above, a large wooden board, framed in chipped blue paint, is mottled. But affixed on it is a portrait, carefully straightened, framed and cleaned – Dr BR Ambedkar’s face offering quiet dignity against the wall’s decay.

It is into this modest one-room house on an edge of Guntur town in Andhra Pradesh that Radhika Vemula and her son Raja moved in 2016, a few months after her elder son, PhD student Rohith, died by suicide at the University of Hyderabad following months of caste discrimination. Campuses across India were in ferment and thousands of young Dalit students were hitting the streets. Politicians cutting across ideological lines were making a beeline for the southern Andhra town.

Yet, quietly, another crisis was brewing. “Pressure was building on our landlord about renting to us. People would come to talk to them. We couldn’t get a house on rent. Our identity was out. They didn’t want any trouble and asked us to leave,” said Radhika Vemula.

Around her, electrical cables lie coiled on a dug-up dirt lane. On either side, low houses line up closely, terraces crowded with water tanks, pots, and improvised coverings. “This used to be a slum, a dumpyard. But when we were getting death threats, no one recognised us here. We could be anonymous and carry on with our fight,” said Raja.

The 2016 death of Rohith Vemula – termed an institutional murder by his friends and family – uncorked a fount of anger among young people from marginalised castes, who spoke out about covert and overt discrimination that was thwarting their pursuit of dignity and prosperity

For a generation of Indians, the moment forced them to come to terms with the country’s oldest faultline – caste – and catalysed conversations that resulted in significant orders from the Supreme Court and the University Grants Commission (UGC). Yet, the protests exacted a deep personal cost from those who fronted it and many of the legal issues raised remain in limbo. A decade on, HT takes stock.

A life of struggles

Rohith was born on January 30, 1989 in Guntur, the second of three children. He grew up in a low-income household and often had to resort to manual labour to make ends meet. But egged on by his mother, he focused on his education , doing a BSc in Microbiology from Guntur and later his masters and PhD from the University of Hyderabad.

“Even in school, he was my inspiration. We went to a Telugu medium school but somehow he had learnt English and would speak it at home,” said Raja. Married off at 15, Radhika returned to education with her sons, pursuing her bachelors of arts degree alongside Rohith.

Rohith met his closest friend Shaikh Riyaz during ragging in college. “He would often talk about his dream of becoming someone big – maybe a collector. And he would unfailingly send money home from his stipend,” said Riyaz.

In July 2015, that stipend was abruptly stopped. Later that month, Rohith and four other members of the Ambedkar Students Association – Dontha Prashanth, Sunkanna Velpula, Vijay Kumar Pedapudi and Seshu Chemudugunta – were expelled from the hostel and barred access to public spaces on campus, after an altercation with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad students. “Please give us poison at the time of admission itself instead of humiliating us like this,” Rohith wrote to the then vice-chancellor that December.

They were later suspended for six months and their fellowship stopped, prompting them to start a relay hunger strike at a makeshift tent on campus on January 3, 2016.

“That was also around Sankranti. I had called him a few days before, saying Amma was asking him to come home. He said he couldn’t, that problems were compounding on campus, that he was scared he wouldn’t be able to finish his PhD, support his family,” said Riyaz, biting back tears.

On the evening of January 17, 2016, Rohith, then 26, was found dead in the room of a fellow student where he was temporarily staying. His searing suicide note, written in English, lamented the “accident of his birth”

“The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living,” he wrote.

Protests and police action

The death set off a clamour by opposition parties for the resignation of then vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile, then Union minister of state for labour Bandaru Dattatreya – who had written a letter expressing his opposition to the students – and even then Union minister for education Smriti Irani. Cases were filed, both by the family and students, as well as by ABVP and the university. Dattatreya and Irani blamed the Opposition for allegedly inciting the students.

Prashanth, Rohith’s friend, registered an FIR for abetment of suicide and under the SC/ST Act against then V-C Podile, Dattatreya, then lawmaker N Ramachandra Rao and three ABVP office-bearers. Separately, N Susheel Kumar – the ABVP student with whom the altercations had first begun and who is now an assistant professor at Delhi University – filed cases against seven ASA members.

The university and the state police also filed two separate cases – one under Indian Penal Code sections 147, 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 323 (causing hurt), 342 (wrongful confinement), 353 (Assault or criminal force on public servant), 452 (trespass) and 506 (criminal intimidation) and prevention of damage to public property and another under 147 (rioting), 324 (causing hurt), 353 (assault), 149 (unlawful assembly), and prevention of damage to public property. In one case 44 students were booked and in another 32. This included two faculty members. HT has reviewed the case records.

The trajectory of these two sets of cases has been markedly different. In the cases filed by students, there is little progress. In 2024, the Telangana Police filed a closure report in the case but withdrew it after a political storm – the ruling Congress had backed the protests that broke out when the Bharat Rashtra Samithi was in power – and the state’s top cop announced that a fresh investigation would be conducted.

“On one side, we are grieving our close friend for 10 years and on the other side, dealing with the police summons in cases foisted on us. But this rupture brings us close to reality. Just because the case has hit the headlines, the structure of caste discrimination is not gone. Look at the closure report, even reading it was agony. It’s difficult to handle those moments,” said Prashanth.

“Sometimes we have wondered if we should compromise, but there are so many lies against us, we have to fight it. Caste eradicates our hope but this battle and our unity as friends for Rohith brings it back.”

Senior advocate V Raghunath confirmed that summons were issued in one of the cases and cross-examination of witnesses was on. “But the case on the actual suicide of Rohith Vemula saw the police file a closure report without even informing the family. We’re filing a protest petition on this.”

Key to these cases has been a tussle over Rohith’s caste status – a question first raised by the justice AK Roopanwal commission set up by UGC in 2016, which said that Rohith was not Dalit and claimed SC status for reservation. This claim was then repeated in the 2024 Telangana police report but the state government has since backed away from this assertion.

“There is no basis for these claims. I have submitted every document showing that both I and my children are SC. If he is not Dalit, will they bring back my son? Will they change everything he went through? If they bring back my Rohith, I’m happy to say we are not Dalit,” said Radhika, pointing out that the Guntur collector has also backed her stance with a certificate.

The other set of cases filed by the university and ABVP members has complicated the lives of the students. HT spoke to four former UoH students – three on the condition of anonymity – who spoke about the stress of monthly hearings, court dates that forced them travel across the country at short notice, and repeated problems in finding jobs, getting academic positions and appearing for government exams.

Sunkanna Velpula, who was suspended alongside Rohith, is one of them. Born in a remote village in Kurnool district, Sunkanna worked as a server in a hotel and a bakery, mechanic and a lorry cleaner, slept in a bus stand and a shed, before he passed his Class 10 exams.

“All politicians have avoided us, they haven’t helped us, and we are begging for bus fare and struggling to live”.

He is now a farmer.

“Due to the false cases, I lost my career, dreams and goals. I began from nothing and I have slipped back to there. I struggled for education for 35 years, got a PhD and post-doc, and now again I am back to the farm. There is no difference now between me and any animal,” he added.

“Rohith lost his life, and we are also slowly losing ours.”

Legal battle against bias

In 2019, Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, the mother of medical student Payal Tadvi who died after bullying at a medical college in Maharashtra, approached the Supreme Court to draft guidelines against caste discrimination in educational campuses. The court acknowledged the need to examine the broader implications of caste discrimination, issued notice to UGC and the Centre, and reiterated that institutions must strictly implement mechanisms such as equal opportunity cells, grievance redressal systems, and SC/ST act safeguards.

Last week, as a fallout, UGC directed all institutions to establish equity committees and equal opportunity centres to handle discrimination complaints and promote inclusion. Institutions must also run a round-the-clock equity helpline and maintain an online mechanism. Failure to comply with the norms might lose the institution its UGC recognition.

“Discrimination means any unfair, differential, or biased treatment or any such act against any stakeholder, whether explicit or implicit, on the grounds only of religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, disability, or any of them,” the notification, seen by HT, said.

“It happened after the suicide of Payal Tadvi in Maharashtra because of college bullying. There were 2012 UGC regulations on equity but few were aware of this. Through RTI, we realised more than half of the colleges had no idea about these guidelines and even the ones that had set it up were not implementing it fully,” said Disha Wadekar, Radhika’s advocate in the case.

In the Tadvi case, the police filed a charge sheet against three fellow medical students and the trial is on.

The other thrust was an umbrella anti-discrimination act that the movement drafted and presented to the Karnataka government last week, and is set to be presented to the Telangana government this week.

This so-called Rohith Vemula Bill, 2025, dramatically expands the scope of safeguards available to SC and ST students by explicitly describing discrimination as “any intentional or unintentional action or omission that has an adverse effect on an SC/ST individual or a group”, and focuses on everyday acts of discrimination.

Importantly, it mentions indirect discrimination as actions that “may appear to be neutral or unrelated to caste but has an adverse effect” on SC/ST people, institutional discrimination as “action that are part of the structures of an institution” but “create or perpetuate an cumulative adverse effect”, and brings SC/ST faculty members under its ambit.

The draft is replete with examples of discrimination that might not be obvious – “A non-SC/ST faculty member expresses supremacy of his caste and claims that those students who belong to his caste are naturally gifted in academics” or “the attendance register of XYZ University has a caste column”.

“The Karnataka campaign for Rohith Act has been working for close to two years. It is different from the SC/ST Act because this is a civil legislation that provides an avenue to settle conflicts in a non-criminalising manner. The draft accounts for evolving forms of discrimination such as indirect discrimination, institutional discrimination, and microaggressions. The draft has been made after extensive research on the intersection of law and discrimination in educational institutions,” said Ashna Singh, an assistant professor at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.

Kin struggle to survive

The last decade has been unrelenting for Rohith’s family.

“For close to nine months, we were fed by Riyaz’s family because we didn’t have anything. I left my studies and started typing petitions for lawyers. For three years, I went from Guntur to Vijayawada to the Amaravati high court, and then back. I’d get ₹70 for a petition. That’s how we survived,” said Raja.

The 34-year-old also worked as a daily wage labourer, a taxi driver and a goods vehicle driver. “I had a blue tempo with an Ambedkar portrait. People eventually guessed who we were and started keeping distance,” he added.

Radhika, who had supported the family earlier through domestic work and by stitching clothes, has again opened a small tailoring shop, earning a maximum of ₹300 a day. For several weeks a year, she is called by student groups to speak at conferences and gatherings – about her son, his struggle, and how she doesn’t want anyone else to meet the same fate. Travel is expensive but the family pools money together – and food prep for 4-5 days – to make it. “We didn’t have time to feel sad. That’s how we could survive,” said Raja.

For Radhika, days are interspersed between loneliness and memories of Rohith refusing to skip school, eating his favourite chicken curry, and talking about his dreams of emulating Ambedkar’s erudition. Shortly after his death, the family converted to Buddhism. “We left caste behind but others seem to have caught it.”

“I feel lonely but also responsible for the cause of every student. My Rohith would have wanted me to fight.”

Sitting on the terrace of her house, the 54-year-old is getting ready to go to Hyderabad to commemorate the 10th anniversary of what she calls Rohith Shahadat Diwas, Rohith Sacrifice Day. Going back to the campus where she lost his son is fraught, but she remembers it as the last place she saw him, spent time with him.

“His statue is there. Till my death, once a year I will go to meet my son,” she said. “No one can stop me.”