TIRUCHY: Bharathidasan University on Monday assured students in Khajamalai campus that the head of the Geology department Sakthivel, who is accused of forcing a student to attempt suicide, will not handle classes for now. This after parents and students staged a protest demanding his termination.
A second-year Geology student attempted suicide on November 15, alleging Sakthivel had been harassing her. She said the HOD had seized her phone and coerced her to unlock it to check the call list and other contents.
Further, she alleged that he coerced her to write an apology based on the ‘contents’ on her phone.
The girl claimed she had complained to the university management while a few others said they approached police, but no action was taken against Sakthivel.
With protesters blocking the entrance to the institution, university Registrar G Gopinath, and police tried to pacify them. The protestors demanded that police register FIR against the HoD. Officials then gave them an assurance that Sakthivel would not be allowed to handle their classes anymore.
Following this, the protest was called off.
A student said, “Students were verbally abused and forced to write an apology letter, mentioning other student’s names. He [HOD] would ask us to get our parent’s signatures on it.”
The mother of a woman student in the Geology department said, “I refused to sign a letter that my daughter brought because it said that she was talking to boys and taking photographs with them. What was wrong about that? Why should she write an apology and get it signed by me? But when I refused, my daughter was warned that she would fail in the exams if I didn’t comply. So I obliged.”