Inji Pennu, a reporter for the international writers' and activists' forum 'Global Voices', has recently shared a Facebook post by Srishti Dutta Chowdhury on sexual harassment faced by the students from one of the professors of the Jadavpur University's Department of Comparative Literature.
In the post, Chowdhury alleges that Assistant Professor Sumit Kumar Barua has harassed students over the last four years. Despite the complaints, hardly any action was taken by the University.
When a formal complaint was made to the department on Barua by another batch in 2016, he was awarded a one year paid leave for committing sexual assault which he used for completing his PhD thesis, says the post. Further, Chowdhury requests the support of Jadavpur University students across departments for the replacement of Sumit Kumar Barua.
Earlier, Raya Sarkar, a law student from the University of California at Davis had put out a crowd-sourced list naming academics who have been accused of sexual harassment by students in a controversial Facebook post. The list includes several prominent academics from some of India’s premier academic institutions.
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