Hyderabad, July 13: The mass fast-unto-death by the students for separate Telangana at the Arts College on the Osmania University campus entered the second day which passed off peacefully without any incident.
Nearly 70 students of Osmania and Kakatiya Universities continued their fast even as the police kept a tight vigil on the campus by not allowing any outsider inside.
For the second day, OU campus remained a fortress with only staff and students being allowed inside after thorough verification. Meanwhile, a woman student who sat on fast yesterday, was on Tuesday forced to withdraw after students found that she was not a student of any of the universities in the region.
The independent JAC and the Telangana Vidyarthi Ikya Vedika (TVIV) conducted a mass head tonsure protest at Arts College. Nearly 20 students tonsured their heads after they took out a procession of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s flexi on the campus. “People of the region have sacrificed their lives for a separate state. The Congress chief should start the process of creating a separate Telangana at least now,” TVIV leader K Mahesh said. Meanwhile, the doctors JAC expressed solidarity with the fasting students and conducted medical tests on them. The doctors were reportedly forced to enter the campus through a narrow opening from the Tarnaka side as the police blocked all the entrances to the campus. The OUJAC has given a bandh call of educational institutions in the region on Wednesday.
—Agencies