The Kerala capital yesterday resembled a battlefield for most of the morning as violence engulfed the city following student protests over the incidents that led to the suicide of a computer engineering student.

The student, Rajani S. Anand, took the extreme step of jumping to her death from the seventh-floor of a building here on Thursday because she did not have the finances to continue her studies.

She had approached a nationalised bank for a study loan, and decided to take her life after her request was turned down by the bank. Rajani had passed SSLC in first class and had a distinction for her Plus Two examination.

A passenger car was set aflame, several private and government vehicles were damaged and some of the bank branches in the city centre were attacked as students belonging to the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Federation (AISF) clashed with police in several parts of the city many times over, leaving the city a virtual battlefield.

Opposition MLAs Thomas Isaac and M.V. Jayarajan were among those who were caught in the crossfire between students and police as the duo tried to make their way through the police cordon into the premises of the University College, which was one of the focal points of the violent incidents.

Police kept hurling tear gas shells into the college campus as students were pelting stones from inside.

In the state Assembly, chief minister A.K. Antony quickly agreed to a judicial inquiry into the death of the student after the Opposition Left Democratic Front shouted its displeasure over the government's decision to have an inquiry conducted by the revenue secretary.

Opposition leader V.S. Achuthanandan, who visited the Medical College hospital here to see the body of the dead girl, blamed the government for taking away the benefits that the previous LDF government had been offering Harijan students like Rajani.

He said the bank which denied the loan to the student, the principal of the college in Adoor who took an unhelpful attitude to her and the minister in charge of Harijan welfare, M.A. Kuttappan were all responsible for her death.


Rajani: tragic symbol

When 22-year-old Rajani S. Anand, a computer engineering student at the Adoor Engineering College, jumped to her death, she may have taken down with her the last hopes of the A.K. Antony Government about solving the myriad problems associated with its half-hearted liberalisation of the professional education sector.

On one hand, the state government is engaged in a face-off with the college managements over the fee structure in the colleges and the share of seats of the government and the managements in the colleges. On the other, the government has failed to coax the banks into giving educational loans to students to pursue the expensive professional education courses.

The college managements, which invested millions into the infrastructure, are now finding out that they are in for troubled times because of ever-changing government policies.

Until Rajani jumped to her death, it was taken for granted that there were no problems for students in government colleges since the problem of high fees existed only in privately promoted colleges.

But Rajani was a student of a government-funded engineering college in Adoor. Rajani had to discontinue studies after six months because she could not pay the monthly hostel fee of Rs1,200.

The bank that she approached turned down the loan request because it was reportedly not convinced about the ability of the family, which lives in a two-cent plot, to repay the loan.

When all doors were closed, Rajani scribbled in a notebook, "I am going from this world" and jumped to her death.

Rajani's mother does odd jobs to support the family since her husband is sick. Rajani has two siblings, Shine and Sivan.