Osmania U tense after death of student leader

M Sridhar in Hyderabad

Osmania University is still tense following the murder of Chandra Reddy, a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, by members of the Radical Students Union.

Claiming responsibility for the killing in a statement issued to the press, K Narasimha, president of the RSU's Hyderabad unit, said it was inevitable that his group would kill Chandra Reddy because the ABVP leader was perpetuating 'unending violence and suppressing the revolutionary movement.' The RSU is affiliated to the Peoples War Group, the outlawed Marxist-Leninist outfit, while the ABVP is the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Narasimha also warned other ABVP leaders Pradeep, Manohar Reddy, Venugopal, Paparao, Kasam Venkateswarlu, Yugandhar, Amarendar and Jagan that 'If they do not mend (their ways) they also face the fate of Chandra Reddy.'

Academic activity came to a halt at Osmania University after ABVP students ransacked the room of left wing students, severely beating up K Satyanarayana, a research scholar in political science who had just returned from hospital. His room was spattered with his blood after Chandra Reddy's supporters went on the rampage, armed with sticks and cycle chains. Rooms of left-wing sympathisers were set on fire and the ladies hostel was scoured for leftist students. Finally, even the police left the campus at the mercy of Chandra Reddy's followers. The ABVP students also destroyed parts of the historic Arts College Building.

ABVP leaders allege that the police was biased and using every opportunity to book students affiliated to their group. They berated Police Commissioner C P Ramaswamy when he came to see Chandra Reddy's body after the post-mortem. Students attacked the commissioner and other police officers over a Left wing poster that claimed Inspector Sampath Kumar Reddy was a sincere officer. This, they claimed, was proof that he supported the Naxalites.

They claimed that at least 20 to 30 cases were foisted on every notable ABVP leader because Inspector Reddy nourished a grudge against the ABVP which had often resisted his relative and former vice-chancellor Professor M Malla Reddy.

Incidents of violence bespatter the last 25 years of Osmania University's 75-year history. In the seventies, a gold medallist and student leader George Reddy was murdered. In 1986, ABVP leader Muralidhar was fired at by radicals. In 1993, ABVP men killed a student named Arun Kumar, crushing him under a boulder. Till the 1980s, left wing radicals dominated the campus, but the ABVP supplanted them by 1985.