Protests erupt on OU campus

Hyderabad: Tense situation continued on Osmani University campus even on Monday morning with scores of students clashing with the police, when the latter tried to prevent them from taking out a rally following the suicide by postgraduate student E Murali on Saturday night.

Trouble began at around 10.30 am, when students from various hostels gathered in front of Arts College building to take out a rally to press their demand for the immediate release of the students arrested by the police in the wee hours of Monday for their involvement in a scuffle that took place between the students and police, when the police tried to shift Murali’s body.

The students insisted that they be allowed to take out the rally. When the police refused, the unrelenting students tried to take out the rally resulting in a scuffle between the police and the students. Following this, some students pelted stones at the police who resorted to lathi-charge on the students.

When the dawn broke, students raising anti-government and anti-Chief Minister slogans, set fire to KCR’s effigy. The students demanded immediate release of all the students arrested in the small hours when they tried to obstruct the police from shifting the body of the deceased Gandhi General Hospital for a post mortem examination. Citing that the protest rally would add fuel to fire to the already volatile situation on the campus, the police refused permission and resorted to lathi-charge to restore order. Since Sunday night, trouble kept breaking out on the campus after Murali’s suicide in Maneru hostel.

Efforts of the police to convince the students for nearly four and half hours to allow them to shift the body of the victim to conduct postmortem on Sunday night had failed. Suspecting the police had created a fake suicide note to cover the real reason of the suicide, the students demanded an impartial inquiry into the same and demanded payment of compensation of Rs 50 lakh and a government job or five-acre land to the kin of the deceased.

As their demands gained support from visiting leaders TJAC chairman M Kodandaram, BJP MLC N Ramachender Rao and others, the students refused to allow the police to shift the body.

It was against this backdrop that in the small hours of Monday, about 500 policemen in the riot gear descended on Maneru hostel. Sighting the heavy contingent of the police, the students had locked the main doors of the hostel from inside in a bid to prevent the police from entering.

Some students had climbed the terrace of the hostel and started throwing chairs. However, the police gained the entry breaking the doors and made their way up to the room where the body of the deceased was kept. Several students, besides the police personnel were injured in the scuffle.

It was after much effort that the police had shifted the body of the deceased to Gandhi Hospital for postmortem and the same has been completed and the body was handed over to the relatives at 8 am on Monday. Meanwhile, the police claimed that so far 35 people were taken into custody on the charges of instigating trouble on the campus. The bandh called by students passed off peacefully in after initial tension till 2 pm on Monday. The police continued their vigil.