Month on, TISS yet to dismiss professor accused of harassment

The ICC, which had submitted an official inquiry report on March 20, had suggested the accused be sacked within a month.

Almost a month after an internal inquiry committee (ICC) of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) found a senior professor guilty of sexually harassing a former student, the institute is yet to dismiss the accused. The TISS Students’ Union on Friday sent an email to the institute’s director, asking her to implement the recommendations of the ICC within the set time-frame of a month.

Month on, TISS yet to dismiss professor accused of harassment

The ICC, which had submitted an official inquiry report on March 20, had suggested the accused be sacked within a month. While TISS had sent a show-cause notice to the professor on March 20 and given him two weeks to respond, no action has been taken against him although the notice period has lapsed.

“This is a sensitive issue and the ICC has already found the professor guilty. The institute should not take so long to implement the recommendations especially as the inquiry report itself took over five months,” said Jit Hazarika, president of the union.

Shalini Bharat, director of TISS, said a decision will be made soon. “This process is quite lengthy and we are working on it,” she said.

In October 2018, the student took to social media to write about the various incidents of sexual harassment that took place in 2006, when she was pursuing her MA at TISS. She said that although she and the accused shared a professional relationship throughout the two-year period of her MA, he “abused” her towards the end.

“The normality of the relationship made it all the more difficult when things changed in the last two or three months at TISS after I opted to submit a thesis under his supervision,” she posted, adding that the accused had tried to kiss her and asked her to sit on his lap.