By Sharanya Gopinathan
What’s up Tamil Nadu?!
The Devanga College for Arts, which comes under the Madurai Kamaraj University, has been in the headlines all this week because of a rather sensational and unexpected case centred around a teacher, Nirmala Devi. Four BSc students have accused Nirmala Devi of trying to convince them to perform sexual favours for higher officials in Madurai Kamaraj University when she came to their college to take a refresher course.
The incident took place last month, after which Devi, a former student of Devanga, was suspended temporarily. It’s making headlines now after a recording of the 20-minute conversation went viral on social media. In the recording, Devi can be heard telling the students that they’ll receive 85 percent marks if they perform these favours. She’s also heard claiming that she knows the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Banwarilal Purohit, “very well”. Devi was arrested by police on 17 April, after they broke into her home where she had barricaded herself upon seeing cops outside.
Intriguingly, The News Minute points out that while Nirmala Devi may now finally have been arrested a full month after the incident thanks to the interest that the incident spawned on social media, Devanga College for Arts certainly didn’t do its part in handling this case properly.
The College doesn’t have an Internal Complaints Committee, as mandated by the UGC guidelines. Instead, when the students approached the principal with their complaints, as the secretary of the college R Ramaswamy says, he decided to “form a group of senior professors to handle the matter”. Which actually sounds like the worst nightmare of any college student who has faced sexual harassment at the hands of a staff member. As though to unsuccessful offset the awful, Ramaswamy then says, “We have a women’s welfare committee in college that gives female students information on rights and personal hygiene. We had one of the members also as part of the committee.”
Wait, it gets much worse and weirder though. In this tangled mess with no functioning ICC, the course of action that’s been decided upon in this case is to have a “one-man committee” investigate this case. The committee has been formed by the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Banwarilal Purohit (yes, the same one mentioned in the leaked recording), and the Governor claims that as the vice chancellor of the university, he has the sole authority to form a committee in this case.
Except there’s really no law, Act or rule that we know of that allows him to do this. Crimes of sexual harassment and assault are not meant to be handled by one-man committees formulated by the Governor of that state. There are various Acts and guidelines that specify the composition of the committees that are meant to look into these cases, and none of them mandate a one-man enquiry team put together by a powerful person mentioned in the evidence.
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