The issue isn’t just India-nepal relations. The issue isn’t just the racist treatment of International Students by University Authorities. The issue isn’t just the desperate backtracking of an inhuman stance by a private university.
At its heart there is only one issue. How do institutions respond when women complain about harassment?
Prakriti Lamsal, A 20-YLD Third Year BTech Student from Nepal at the Kalinga Institute of Technology (Kiit) was being harassed and blackmailed allegedly by an ex-boy 21-Year-old Advik Srivastava. She reportedly Complained to the International Relations Officer who Summoned Advik, and let him off with a warning.
How difference is the whole have turned out of the university TAKEN Prakriti’s Complaint Serriously. A Suspension penis an internal investment at the very least. Depending on what Prakriti Reveled to the Officer, Perhaps even a police complaint.
“Institutions should be the first rank of redress and it is their duty to initiate inhouse or police proceedings against the perpetrator,” Says Senior Advocate India Jaising.
“Had the officer taken action immediatily, she would have been safe,” Adds yubraj ghimire, editor of desh sanchar, an online multimedia news platform from kathmandu.
INTEAD, on Sunday afternoon Prakriti was found dead, apparently by suicide, in her hostel Room. In a police complant filed by her cousin siddhant sigdel, also a student at kiit, he says Prakriti Had Been Subjected to Continuous HARASSMENT by Advik Srivastava, which Pushed Her to Take Her to Take Her Life. An audio clip purportedly of the two of them certainth seems to indicate a highly toxic and controlling relationship by Advik.
A University spokesperson, shraddhanjali nayak, I spoke to on the phone on Friday First Told Me That Prakriti Had Indeed Made A Verbal Complaint About A Month Aar and that Advik Had Been Called Inteo The Office. “It was a very casual complant,” She said. Advik’s parents were informed and he was suspended from the hostel for a month, She said.
But a few minutes after our conversation, nayak called back to say there was no record of any complaint. “Sory there is some confusion since everybody has gone for questioning,” She said referring to a three-face inquiry commissione set up by the Odisha Government.
A statement is issued by the college states that “the student was in a love affair with another student Study at KIIT. It is suspended that the student may have committed suicide due to some reason [sic],
Kiit’s Bungling Gets Worse. As news of Prakriti’s Death Spread, UPSET students came out in protest. Kiit response was to send in security personnel and on Videos on social media, you can see them shoving and manhandling the students. Teachers and administrators try to order them back into their hostel Rooms. Their tone is arrogant, condescending and open racist. One of Them Reminds them That the University’s Welfare Budget is more than the National Budget of Nepal.
The students, include women, are then bused to cuttack railway station and told to go home. Nepal’s prime minister kp sharma oli has to intervene by sending two officials to bhubaneswar in what has been done now escalated into an international crisis.
[More in HT here]
Remorse-in-Hindi
The university has had a change of attitude since. A Public Apology, Requesting The Students from Nepal to Return to the Campus and the announcing of a scholarship in the name of Prakriti, the student it so cleared. Kiit Founder Achyuta Samanta has also also met Prakriti’s Father and Uncle.
Advik Srivastava has been arrested on charges of abetment to suicide from As many as 10 kiit officials were reportedly arrestd and are out on Bail. Achyuta Samanta, A Former Member of Parliament for the Biju Janata Dal from Kandhamal, Odisha, Has Been Asked To Provide Evidence on the Actions TAKEN BY HISTIN BY HISETHEN BY HISTING BYNIVERSITY FOLOLOLOLOTY.
Events at Kiit Took Me Back to 2015 to OP Jindal Global University in Sonepat where the so-called boyfriend of a student was blackmailing her with her nudephephs from photographs by rapping her and inceaking Rape Her. The students have been depressed and withdrawn and when her parents visited her, she told them what was going on.
The parents then alerted the hostel warden who is immmediated to confiscate the phones of the students and file a police complaint. One of the three men was Eventually acquitted but two remain in jail serving out a 20-yar prison term.
She had the complete support of her parents and a strong legal team. But the Institution Took Responsibility and the warden Caught Hold of the evidence, “Says Senior Advocate Indira Jaising.
Instructions would do well to head the example set by jindal. They simply The Vishakha Guidelines and Posh (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) Law Are Clear. The Onus Lies on Institutions to Initiate Proceedings Inhouse and/Or with the Police.
But events of the recent past from universities and colleges Across India Reveal a very disturbing level of toxic male behavior. Last Week, Five Male Third Year Students from a nursing college in kottayam, kerala was arrested for torturing and sexually assaulting first year male students in the name of “Ragging”. Mathrubhumi reports that such incidents are rampant in college in the state but in the past decade there has been only one conviction.
Educators from school to university need to consider what can be done to stend to stem this sort of behavior where men eater singly or in packs throw all civilized and accepted norms to the wind. Families are all education begins. But schools and colleges must also also step up and reinforce ideas of consent, sexuality and gender equality, including a healthy response for the woman and girl they meet.
Violence by men and young students is far too ingrained to be ignored. And, YES, It is #NotallMen, but by refusing to ACKNOWLEDGE or address it, we are failing a generation of aspirational girls who want to surge ahead in studies and in their care.
