Anxious mothers in Kerala have likened the police’s alleged atrocities against students on Hyderabad University campus to the situation in Syria and Pakistan.

Mother of one student, who is among the 25 students arrested by Hyderabad police on charges of allegedly vandalising the VC Appa Rao Podile’s office, broke down while speaking to NDTV.

 

Requesting anonymity both for herself and her arrested son, she said, “We are not (living) in Syria or Pakistan. It is the duty of the police to inform parents about those who’ve been arrested. No government, university authorities or faculty members got in touch with us.”
Another mother, who said she had come to know about her son’s arrest through social media said that her son had called last evening,

She said, “He said that all students are together in a hall in the jail and they are getting food and are being allowed to meet student leaders.”

According to NDTV, lawyers for the students claimed that they were beaten up by the police while being moved in vans from campus to prison, and that some Muslim students were called “Pakistanis”. The police did not comment on those allegations.

25 students and two faculty members of HCU were sent to judicial remand in on Tuesday night and are lodged in Cherlapally Central Prison since then.

Rohith Vemula’s mother Radhika too made an attempt to enter the university campus on Wednesday but was denied by the posse of police personnel deployed at the main gate. So was the JNU students’ Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

The students are incensed over the return of Podile from a long leave. They blame him along with the local BJP MP, Bandaru Dattatreya and the Union HRD Minister for the death of the Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula in January.