Justice for Fathima: AMU Students Protest over IIT-M Student’s Suicide

New Delhi: Scores of students from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) held a protest at the university canteen, demanding ‘Justice for Fathima Latheef’, a 19-year-old student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, who killed herself on campus on November 9 due to alleged harassment by a professor. The protesting students demanded stringent action against the culprit. 

Raising slogans like 'Fathima ko insaaf do' and 'Hum bhi Fathima (give justice to Fathima, We are also Fathima) and calling for the arrest of a professor named by her in a purported suicide note. The protest was organised by a group of students from various faculties, such as law, art and engineering. 

In a purported suicide note on her mobile phone that has surfaced, Fathima had named an associate professor of philosophy as the reason for her taking such an extreme step.

Speaking to Newsclick, a law student in AMU, who organised the protest, said: "We are tired of people portraying the murder of Fathima Latheef as a suicide. It is institutionalised murder. It is the result of deep-rooted Islamophobia in college campuses.” 

Tazeen Junaid, a literature student, said: "Our protest march is against the institutionalised murder of Fathima Latheef. We are here to question why no action or enquiry has been ordered by IIT Madras. Why has no one acknowledged that she was being harassed by the dean? The police have not taken Fathima's suicide note on her phone as evidence.”

Fathima, who hailed from Kerala and was pursuing her under-graduation course in the humanities department at IIT Madras, committed suicide by hanging from a ceiling fan in her hostel room on November 9, leading to a massive uproar among students.

"The continuous silence of the government over this incident and the rest shows that it is in the grip of hatred, Islamophobia and brahmanical chauvinism. The student fraternity shall rise in defiance," Mutayyib Khan, who took part in the protest, said.

Meanwhile, Fathima’s father, Abdul Latheef, who works in Saudi Arabia since the past two decades, met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on November 12 and sought a fair police probe in the case. He has alleged that his daughter was facing constant harassment and religious by a section of the faculty. In the detailed note recovered from her phone, Fatima had purportedly named two more faculty members, Hemachandran and Brahme, apart from Sudarsan Padmanabhan. 

"My daughter faced casteist and religious discrimination from her faculties. Earlier she said that her (Muslim) name itself is a problem there”, Latheef was quoted as saying by a local news channel. 

Commenting over the protest, former AMU Students' Union (AMUSU) president Faizul Hasan told Newsclick, "When you ignore Rohith Vemula then Najeeb Ahmed happens. When you ignore Najeeb Ahmed then Payal Tadvi happens. When you ignore Payal Tadvi then Fathima Latheef happens. Now you're ignoring Fathima and your child can be next. What are we becoming? Is this the same Country before 2014? Why so much hatred? Religious identity in Institutions like IIT cannot be tolerated, Culprits must be punished. She was Just 19, what has happened that she was to forces to commit suicide.” 

Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police, Chennai city, has transferred the investigation into Fathima Latheef’s suicide to the Central Crime Branch.

This is not the first case of casteist, religious slur in premier institutions of the country. Rohith Vemula, a Ph.D scholar at Hyderabad Central University had committed suicide on January 17, 2016, after caste bias, while Payal Tadvi, a tribal student at TN Topiwala National Medical College, committed suicide on May 22 this year due to alleged caste-based harassment by three doctors in her college.