Chennai: The Chennai police are carrying out an investigation over a ‘threat letter’ to Vice Chancellor of Anna University, M K Surappa.
The inland letter dated 21 October was written in English by a person going by the name, ‘Veerappan’. There was no sender’s address.
A senior police official said, “He got an inland letter from one Veerappa. The hand-written long letter claimed that Veerappa’s team would shoot the VC. We found that the letter was dropped at a post box in Anna Nagar.”
The police said they are not ruling out any suspects including the role of a political party. Police protection is given to Surappa at his office and residence on the campus following the incident.
The controversy is related to the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India offering to grant the Institute of Eminence (IoE) status to Anna University
The series of events began after Surappa took the liberty of writing a letter to the Union government stating that the university has the capacity to generate around Rs 1,500 crore internally over five years and hence does not need the support of the government of Tamilnadu for funds, reports said.
Subsequently, the State government sought an explanation from him for his action and some sections demanded that he step down from the post.
Tamilnadu government also went on to write to the UGC refusing the Institute of Eminence status to Anna University.