Death of Kerala veterinary student | Governor suspends Vice-Chancellor of veterinary university

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan has suspended the Vice Chancellor of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) at Pookode in Wayanad, M.R. Saseendranath, on the charge of oversight and dereliction of duty that allegedly resulted in the torture, public trial, social shaming, and subsequent death by suicide of J.S. Siddharth, a second-year student, at the campus hostel recently.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan on March 2 suspended the Vice-Chancellor of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (KVASU) at Pookode in Wayanad, M.R. Saseendranath, on the charge of oversight and dereliction of duty that allegedly resulted in the torture, public trial, social shaming, and subsequent death by suicide of J.S. Siddharth, a second-year student, at the campus hostel recently.

Speaking to reporters in Thiruvananthapuram, Mr. Khan said he had requested the Kerala High Court to spare a serving judicial officer for conducting an enquiry into the “gruesome and fatal” incident allegedly perpetrated by Students’ Federation of India (SFI) activists in the college.

Mr. Khan said the SFI and the proscribed Popular Front of India (PFI) activists were acting in tandem on college campuses across Kerala. He said the “torment, insult, physical assault and forced starvation” that resulted in Siddharth’s death were not a one-off incident. The SFI has a stranglehold on campuses and hostels, he said.

Mr. Khan said that the “SFI-PFI combine” had turned hostels on several college campuses into their fiefdoms. “Teachers were scared to conduct inspections. The party-controlled teacher organisations played second fiddle to the SFI”, Mr. Khan said.

He said the scope of the impending judicial enquiry would cover those aspects.

The Governor said the post-mortem examination report showed the extent of torture the SFI had inflicted on Siddharth. “The aggressors deprived the boy of food and water for days,” Mr. Khan said.

The Governor also expressed scepticism about the police investigation in abetment of suicide cases. He said the State’s law enforcement was among the finest in the country, but it was under “the CPI(M)‘s political control”.