My name is Rohith Vemula, I am a Dalit, he says in video days before committing suicide

"My name is Rohith Vemula... I'm a Dalit from Guntur district," asserted the PhD scholar in a video aired by  NDTV.

"I'm a son of a daily wage labourer and my mother has raised us," he said, explaining in the video that his research fellowship got him admission to the university's social science school as a "general category student."

Rohith's friends said the video was shot days before he hanged himself in his hostel room  in January this year.

Rohith, 26, killed himself days after he and four other students were suspended by the university and barred from its hostel.

A month before his death, he had written to the university's vice chancellor Appa Rao about caste discrimination and said Dalit students should be given "a rope to hang themselves".

The Justice Roopanwal Commission report, submitted earlier this month, said there is no proof that  Vemula's mother V Radhika belongs to the "Mala" Dalit community.

Rohith's friends and sympathisers had blamed Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattareya for the tragic end of his life, but the commission report absolved them of the charge, saying they had not put any pressure on the university authorities to take any measure against Vemula.

Rohith Vemula's friends told NDTV that they have released the video now as they could access it only recently from a laptop that had been seized by the police when they were arrested in March this year after protests.