‘It is scary’: HC on Gujarat law university ‘suppressing’ homophobia, rape incidents | Ahmedabad News

The court noted the allegations against faculty members, the registrar, and the director of the university in Gandhinagar. Going through parts of the report on Wednesday, the CJ remarked, “This report is really scary… it is scary. And the involvement of the GNLU administration, suppressing the whole incident…. and this is not two incidents… incidents of molestation, rape, discrimination, homophobia, favouritism, suppression of voices, lack of existence of internal complaint committee (ICC), lack of information to the students about ICC…and then the Registrar is filing an affidavit before us that nothing happened… close the proceeding. He dared to say this in the court when the court was seized with the matter? How will these people protect the children?”

The report was submitted to the court by the committee on February 22 in sealed covers. The HC had taken suo motu cognisance of newspaper reports in September 2023 of GNLU students posting on Instagram about the alleged incidents of sexual harassment and discrimination.

At an earlier hearing, the HC took objection to Registrar Jagadeesh Chandra TG’s stance wherein the Registrar, in an affidavit, had dismissed the allegations. The court had also taken objection to the way the university acted following the allegations, wherein it included Professor Anjani Singh Tomar, the ICC chairperson, as part of an independent fact-finding committee, specific to probing the allegations. The court had termed it to be an “eyewash” and had called the Registrar’s stance as being “an overanxious effort to hush-hush the whole matter”.

The independent fact-finding committee was later reconstituted, with retired Justice Harsha Devani, who had been a judge in the High Court, along with Bhargavi Dave, secretary of the State Human Rights Commissionm and Surbhi Mathur, associate professor at the National Forensic Sciences University.

The panel report highlights student submissions such as “a politically influential person has been involved in suppressing the case before the police”.

“The question is – ‘Are you facing any inhibition in sharing your thoughts with the committee on account of fear of the university authorities’. The answer is, ‘I was not, but initially appointing professor so-and-so as the head of the fact-finding committee had led a lot of people to not come out with whatever they wanted to’…,” the CJ read out from a part of the report.

Criticising the university, she further said, “How can we expect the students to be stating something wrong and why would they do it? They are studying in an institution and have no personal grudges against any of the faculty members… it was so difficult for them to speak. And then they are students of law. If students of law, their voices are suppressed, who will speak in the country? They are supposed to protect and help others whose voices are to be heard in society….They are the future protectors of law…. then all these lectures, talks, seminars, everything goes to rubbish, it has no meaning at all. If the state of affairs in a law college then we cannot show our faces to anyone. We are all responsible for this situation…This requires high-level inquiry into the affairs of GNLU and its faculty…”