Jadavpur University students skipped classes for 8 months. Here’s why

A day before Newslaundry started a new series to look into the functioning of internal mechanisms to combat sexual harassment on campuses, a Facebook post was made by a student from Jadavpur University (JU),  Srishti Dutta Chowdhury, exposing a series of sexual assaults by assistant professor Sumit Kumar Barua over four years.

Not just that, the students from PG2 class have been boycotting classes since March demanding the removal of Barua, who is a faculty at the department of comparative literature.

Barua, who has been employed in JU for over a decade, has been accused of molesting a post-graduate student at a party in 2016. “When she filed a complaint with the department demanding an apology from Barua, he was asked to take rest of the year off. He returned to the department in March 2017,” said Chowdhury. The students say that this is not the only incident where he has sexually harassed the students and that they are uncomfortable attending his classes.

A serial sexual assaulter?

Students complain that they receive vulgar messages from the professor late at night. “My batchmates have received late night texts such as “I like your figure”, “you are so sweet”, “I would like to marry you” etc. from the professor which make them feel uncomfortable in his classes. He has also handed out notes with sketches of breasts on them,” Chowdhury told Newslaundry.

“It took us a while to realise what was going on. If I remember rightly, an incident took place by the end of 2014. There was only a single female student in the morning class as the attendance is usually low in Barua’s course. The professor came and sat beside her. He looked in to her eyes and said something about fondling her breasts. Shocked, she asked him what did he say, Barua replied that he was just reading out a line from the book,” she said.

The student then made a verbal complaint to the then Head of the Department (HOD). “The HOD asked me to concentrate on my studies as the semester exams were around and she will see what she can do about the incident. The HOD also insisted on not making the issue public,” said the student. The incident was forgotten when a new HOD took charge and he didn’t bother to look into the issue.

A few months after this incident, in February 2016, another incident came to light wherein Barua was accused of sexually assaulting a post-graduate student at a seminar after-party. Explaining the incident, Chowdhury, who is two years junior to the complainant, says, “It was from an after-party of a seminar coordinated by Barua. The complainant had passed out drunk on the bed and Barua molested her at that point of time. When she came to her senses, she found the professor rubbing his nose against her and so on. A research scholar was present in the room with the professor throughout the incident.”

After this incident, the whole batch came together and wrote a complaint to the department saying that they have to take immediate action against the professor. However, the department didn’t initiate any punitive action against the research scholar, but he was barred from the campus.

The complainant along with the other two girls, who were the witnesses, later realised that they were being cornered for various reasons. The complainant, according to Chowdhury, revealed that all she wanted at that point was an unconditional apology and acknowledgement of what happened because the department was threatening her with different things.

“The department head and other faculty came to the students concerned and asked them to stop pursuing this case further and were promised that Professor Barua will be sent on suspension for a year and he will apologise in front of the whole class. Consequently, Barua came and read out an apology in front of the batch and went away for a year,” said the students.

Department faculty Kunal Chattopadhyay told Newslaundry that this was the only time all the faculty in the department was called for the meeting. “We had proposed that students should go to ICC and we will stand with them if they do so,” said Chattopadhyay.

Another faculty from the department said that the decisions were made by the HOD alone giving a disclaimer that she is not authorised to talk to the media. “We knew about the complaints, but never got involved in the whole process. Everything was handled by the HOD and a few faculties,” the professor told Newslaundry.

Students betrayed

When Barua returned in March this year, students realised they had been betrayed. “We were made to believe that the professor got suspended for a year, whereas he was actually on paid leave to finish his Ph.D. theses,” students told Newslaundry.

Consequently, Chowdhury and her batchmates wrote a deputation to the HOD Samantak Das after which they were given three options in an informal meeting. They could either give Barua another chance and try his classes for few months or they could lodge a formal complaint with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) or they can stop opting for his course. The students were unable to lodge a complaint with ICC as complaints can be filed with the committee only within three months of the incident. Finding no other way to get justice, students started boycotting classes since then. Newslaundry failed to reach out to Das as his phone was switched off.

As students failed to yield any response from authorities, they submitted a letter to the department in August, demanding that the assistant professor be removed. Newslaundry accessed the copy of the letter which was signed by 218 students of 250 students in the department. It is not just that the department refused to accept students’ demand, Barua was given more responsibility. “Barua was asked to compensate the classes of other faculties who are on leave. This is just the department pressuring us to attend his classes,” said Chowdhury.

Why did the students not approach ICC?

JU has an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) which is supposed to look into sexual harassment cases. However, students and faculty unanimously said it is not functional. When contacted, ICC presiding officer Suparna Kar Chowdhury said they never got a complaint regarding the matter. “I knew about the issue as I had heard it from the students. But there is no provision in ICC to interfere in issues unless you get a formal complaint,” said Chowdhury.

When we asked students why they never went to the ICC, they replied that after the molestation incident at the party, the students were told by HOD Kavita Punjabi to not go out in public and not talk to other batches about it, and settle it amongst the batch and the department. “We didn’t go to the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), as we were told not to talk about it,” said Chowdhury.

Raya Sarkar effect

As a last resort, students took the matter to Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das only to be left without any assurance. “It was at this juncture, we all collectively decided to go public in order to spread the word about the incidents happening in the college,” said the students. The students made a Facebook post on November 22 describing the pattern of incidents.

Though Newslaundry reached out to the Vice-Chancellor’s office, they declined to either give a response or connect the reporter with the VC. The email sent to the VC also didn’t elicit a response. Multiple calls and an email sent to Professor Barua for his response went unanswered.

If you’re a student, professor or an alumnus and want to write/share how your college deals with sexual harassment, the systems to check it or the lack thereof, email us at campus@newslaundry.com