Mumbai: On June 10, Lokendra Singh Dhandey, a 22-year-old medical student at Bengaluru’s Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College and Research Institution, was found hanging from the ceiling of the boys’ hostel, where he had been living for over ten months.
Lokendra, a young Dalit man from the remote Barmer district in Rajasthan, did not leave a suicide note. However, his father, a lawyer and an Ambedkarite Buddhist, has alleged that his son was harassed and tortured by his three roommates, also students at the same college.
An academically bright student, Lokendra secured admission to the medical college after attempting the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) twice. After securing admission in August last year, Lokendra moved over 2,000 kilometres away to Bengaluru.
“This was the first time my son was stepping out of Rajasthan to study in a big city,” his father, Amit Dhandey, told The Wire.
Amit’s allegations against the three students of the college are based on what his son had shared a month ago.
“A month ago, one of the three students contacted me under the pretext of complaining about my son. He made a few false claims against my son. When I confronted my son, he shared how his roommates kept picking on him and making false allegations,” Amit said.
Since these allegations were mostly benign, Amit says he didn’t pay much attention to them. “Young, college-going kids take time to adjust, I thought.”
But now that Lokendra ended his life, the father says he should have nudged his son to share more. “I didn’t know my son was struggling to the point that he decided to kill himself.”
According to Amit, the three roommates regularly “harassed” Lokendra and asked him to pay for their meals.
“They would call this a party, and every few days, they would force Lokendra to pay for their food. But when it came to them paying for his food, they would exclude him. My son felt isolated and terribly harassed by their constant bullying,” Amit claimed.
He also said that the roommates humiliated Lokendra based on his caste. The Dhandey family belongs to the Meghwal community, a scheduled caste from Rajasthan.
On June 10, around 3 pm, Lokendra was found hanging from the ceiling of his room in the hostel. “We got a call from the college principal informing us about my son’s death,” says Neeta Dhandey, the mother. According to his parents, the college authorities used Lokendra’s fingerprints to unlock his phone and dialled Amit’s number.
The family, far away in Rajasthan, took over 24 hours to reach Bengaluru.
“It is not an easy journey for us. We had to hire vehicles, reach Ahmedabad, and then fly to Bengaluru. On reaching there, neither the college principal nor any senior authority came to meet us. The college was my child’s guardian in our absence. They didn’t care for him when he was alive, and they didn’t care for him in his death,” said Amit.
The family had to arrange to transport their son’s dead body back home too.
The family believes there is more to Lokendra’s suicide. “Once my child’s body was found, the college should have refrained from touching any of his belongings. But they decided to access his phone. We later found out that messages from all college WhatsApp groups that Lokendra was a part of were deleted,” Amit claimed.
The Commercial Street police station has taken Amit’s complaint, but none of the three students, all belonging to non-Dalit identities, have been named as accused in the case.
After Lokendra’s death, his four siblings and his mother are in a state of shock, Amit told The Wire.
“Two of my children are preparing to study medicine. How do I even let them go to a city to study medicine now?” the father asks.
Amit, who has been a part of many anti-caste campaigns in Barmer, has demanded a CBI investigation into the matter. Several anti-caste organisations have written to Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and the President Droupadi Murmu seeking an unbiased investigation into the matter and compensation for the family.
