26, Feb 2016

Our Bureau
New Delhi, Feb. 26: Rohith Vemula’s mother and friends today accused human resource development minister Smriti Irani of spreading falsehoods about the circumstances around the PhD scholar’s suicide and his troubles with his university.
Rohith’s mother Radhika Vemula, brother Raja and friends Dontha Prasanth, Seshaiah and Vijay Kumar said they had counted multiple “lies” spoken by Irani on the subject in Parliament.
“Life imprisonment would be a mild punishment for Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya for wrongly branding Rohith an anti-national and extremist,” Radhika told reporters here today, referring to a letter from Dattatreya.
Rohith, expelled from the Hyderabad Central University’s hostels with four other Dalit students for allegedly attacking a leader of Sangh student arm ABVP, hanged himself in a hostel room on January 17.
Prasanth said Irani had misled the Lok Sabha by saying that no effort had been made to revive Rohith.
“Nobody allowed a doctor near this child, to revive this child, to take him to the hospital,” Irani had said.