Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University Appa Rao have been charged with abetting the suicide of a Dalit scholar, even as the Education Minister Smriti Irani has sent a two-member team to investigate the incident, a media report said today.

"Rohith Vemula, 26, a doctorate student at the Hyderabad Central University, wrote in a suicide note: "No one is responsible for my act of killing myself… Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive," NDTV reported.

Students allege that Mr Dattatreya's letter to Education Minister Smriti Irani in August led to "discriminatory" action taken against him and four other Dalit scholars, said the report.

"Rohith had slept in a tent outside the campus gates for days, along with the others who had also been denied access to the hostel. The five, all members of the Ambedkar union, had been accused of attacking an activist of the BJP-linked union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or ABVP in August, allegedly during a protest against the execution of 1993 Bombay blasts convict Yakub Memon," added the report.

Students blame Banndaru Dattatreya's letter to Smriti Irani calling for action and allege that the university had become a "den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics."

"Rohith's friend Venkat said he was "heartbroken" that the Vice Chancellor had refused to meet him. ''Even Dalit professors who came to meet us supported the Vice Chancellor rather than us,'' Rohith reportedly told Venkat on Sunday morning.

Hours later, he allegedly went quietly into a hostel room and hanged himself. "Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing," he wrote in his suicide note.(Agencies)