We, the undersigned faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru University express our shock and outrage at the extreme penalties recommended against a doctoral student for bringing a sexual harassment complaint against her teacher.
According to a report in the Indian Express (dated 13 December 2018), JNU’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) has decided to punish a student for allegedly filing a ‘false’ sexual harassment complaint against a teacher in what it has deemed to be a ‘frivolous’ complaint. While we are not privy to either the details of the complaint or the justification the ICC has for arriving at this conclusion — rather than simply noting the failure to substantiate a complaint— we find the severity of the penalties imposed extremely troubling.