The services of a faculty member of Jawaharlal Nehru University were terminated on Monday after an inquiry committee found him guilty in a case of alleged sexual harassment filed by a foreign scholar. The complainant was pursuing research under him.
The decision was taken at an emergency meeting of the Executive Council (EC), the university's statutory decision-making body.
According to sources, the professor had allegedly called the research scholar to his house for a party and misbehaved with her. She approached the university’s Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment, the watchdog for dealing with such issues, which suspended him. “In its inquiry, the committee found him guilty and recommended action against him. A meeting of the EC was convened which decided to terminate his services with immediate effect,” an official source said.
The professor could not be contacted as his phone was switched off.
The EC's decision comes at a time when JNU is under criticism for reporting the maximum number of sexual abuse cases among higher education institutions in the country.
Last week, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani had informed the Lok Sabha that 25 cases of sexual harassment were reported from JNU in 2013-2014, the highest among 104 higher education institutions from where such matters were reported.
Last month, Swati Maliwal, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, had also said that as much as 50 p.c. of the 101 sexual harassment complaints filed in 16 educational institutions in the Capital since 2013 were from JNU.
