BENGALURU: The sexual misconduct case involving Professor Giridhar Madras at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has drawn outrage on the social media. A Twitter user posted: “As an institute of significant standing and which attracts and trains some of the best scientific talent in India, IISc’s policy of silence – and the sanctions it threatens upon those who violate it – compels students to repose their faith in the institutional due process while also staving off public accountability.”
Condemning the director’s silence, another tweet said, “This reluctance of the directors to communicate the situation is not just giving rise to speculation, but it is also part of the suffocating stranglehold of patriarchal values that protects perpetrators, even alleged ones.”
People also debated whether Madras should return the recent awards conferred on him. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (2009), J C Bose National Fellowship, and the IISc award for excellence in research. A Twitter user said, “Will these awards be rescinded. I think they should.”The New Indian Express contacted the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize committee at CSIR for comments on the issue, but did not get a response until the time of publishing this report.