The vice-chancellor (V-C) of Visva-Bharati, West Bengal’s only central university, has been charged with insulting the Bengali community in a post that was uploaded on the institution’s website on August 20, police said.
The post, which ran into a few thousand words, was an analysis of the incidents of ragging on various college and university campuses.
In the post, the Bengali community was called hypocrite and also compared to crabs, Sudipta Bhattacharya, a senior professor of economics at Visva-Bharati, alleged in his police complaint lodged on August 31.
Based on Bhattacharya’s complaint and the documents he provided, a first information report (FIR) was registered on the same day by the Santiniketan police station in Bengal’s Birbhum district, where the university is located.
“The V-C, Bidyut Chakrabarty has been charged under sections 504 and 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). An investigation has started,” a Birbhum district police officer said on condition of anonymity. HT has seen a copy of the first information report (FIR).
Section 504 of the IPC says: “Whoever intentionally insults, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”
{{/usCountry}}Section 504 of the IPC says: “Whoever intentionally insults, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”
{{/usCountry}}Section 505 (2) says: “Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement or report containing rumour or alarming news with intent to create or promote, or which is likely to create or promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”
The V-C could not be contacted for a comment.
Mahua Banerjee, the Visva-Bharati spokesperson, said: “We don’t have the details of the FIR. Hence, we cannot say anything right now.”
The Prime Minister is the chancellor of Visva-Bharati, which was set up by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921.
Although Sudipta Bhattacharya is the president of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association, he filed the police complaint as a professor.
Bhattacharya figures among many faculty members and students against whom disciplinary action was taken by the university ever since Chakrabarty took over as V-C in 2018.
Bhattacharya’s services were summarily terminated in December 2022. He has moved court challenging the action.
In January this year, the Calcutta high court said in an order that “stigmatic aspersions” led to the summary termination.
In the January 17 order, a copy of which was seen by HT, Calcutta high court judge Kausik Chanda wrote: “Prima facie, it appears that though the petitioner is a permanent ‘adhyapak’ (professor) the university sought to throw him out by termination of his service following the decision of the executive council taken completely behind his back levelling various stigmatic aspersions against him.”
The FIR against the V-C was registered two days after three female research scholars and a post-graduate student from the anthropology department wrote letters to the President, the Prime Minister, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and several Union ministries seeking action on their complaint of sexual harassment against an associate professor of the department.
This was the third allegation of sexual harassment that has surfaced on the campus in the last three months. In one of these cases, Rajarshi Roy, a professor from the education department, was arrested by the Santiniketan police on June 3.