Dalit harassment: Allahabad HC stays action against IIT-Kanpur professors

Allahabad high court stays action against four IIT Kanpur professors in connection with harassment of Dalit Faculty Member.

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday stayed the recommendations of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), which had asked the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur to lodge an FIR against four professors for allegedly harassing a Dalit faculty member Dr Subramanium Sundrela, a member of a scheduled caste.

The high court stayed the action against the professors accused of committing atrocities against their Dalit colleague. Also, the court clarified that the commission could not not act beyond its jurisdiction and that it had no power to pass such directions.
 

The Allahabad High Court, however, made it clear that the IIT-Kanpur administration might proceed to hold disciplinary proceedings against the professors in accordance with the law.
 

The HC Bench, comprising judges Krishna Murari and Ashok Kumar, passed the order while hearing a petition filed by Ishan Sharma and three others, according to a PTI report.

The court has issued a notice to the NCSC and directed assistant professor Subramanium Sundrela to file a counter affidavit in the case within two weeks.
 

According to an Indian Express report, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) had asked IIT Kanpur to register a police complaint against four professors for “caste-based harassment and discrimination” under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The NCSC had found Dalit faculty member Subrahmanyam Sundrela's allegations of harassment at the hands of Ishan Sharma, Sanjay Mittal, Rajeev Shekhar and Chandra Shekhar Upadhyay to be factually correct and made a report in that regard.
 

To probe Sundrela’s allegations against his colleagues, the Institute Director, Manindra Agarwal, had created a three-member committee which found all four senior professors guilty of continuously harassing Dr Sundrela in its report submitted last month, reported DNA.

ALSO READ: Dalit protest over SC/ST Act: The fight against an invisible enemy
 

The report was placed before the IIT-K Board of Governing Council on March 19 to decide action against the guilty professors. But instead of initiating any action, the Board had recommended a compromise between the victim and the accused faculty members. But Dr Sundrela turned down the offer and took his complaint to the commission, said a DNA report.
 

The commission had taken a serious note of IIT-K administration’s inaction in the matter and issued orders to suspend all four professors and lodge an FIR against them under the SC/ST Act.
 

Sundrela, a graduate of the IIT-Kanpur, joined as an assistant professor in the Department of the Aerospace on January 1. He had lodged a complaint with the IIT-Kanpur board against the four senior professors of the Institute accusing them of harassment and filed a case against them with the NCSC. The accused professors had allegedly passed casteist comments and mentally tortured him because he belonged to a low caste.
 

The IIT-Kanpur management has also removed institute’s SC/ST cell liaison officer Kamal Poddar after following NCSC directives.

The IIT-Kanpur has been in the news for the past one year for all the wrong reasons. In January, a female student of the Institute was allegedly raped by an IAF employee on the pretext of marrying her and in October last year, about 22 students were suspended for ragging their juniors.