Saleem Madavoor alias Muhammed Saleem, national president of Loktantrik Yuva Janata Dal led by former Union Minister Sharad Yadav, from Kerala has filed a public interest litigation petition in the Madras High Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into student deaths reported in Indian Institute of Technology-Madras since 2006.
According to the petitioner, totally 14 students including five from Andhra Pradesh, three from Telangana, three from Kerala, two each from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh and one each from Puducherry, Jharkhand and Rajasthan have committed suicide on IIT-M campus since 2006 due to alleged discrimination on the basis of caste, religion and language.
He claimed that students hailing from backward communities face discrimination by the professors and English speaking students and that was the prime reason for the suicides. The latest victim was Fatima Latheef of Kerala who had died on November 9, the petitioner said and pointed out that the Central Crime Branch police in Chennai was yet to solve the case.
A similar plea by another PIL petitioner for a CBI probe into Fatima’s death alone had already been filed in the court by National Students’ Union of India, affiliated to the Congress party, and a Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee had reserved their orders in that case on November 22.
