This has reference to the news story Axe attack and suicide at JNU doing the rounds in the Media during the past few days.

As one who spent nearly 35 years of his life on the JNU Campus, I would like to give here my views on the subject.

This axe-wielding violent attack was long time coming in JNU. Students are exposed to a great level of freedom which only a residential University like JNU can provide.  They are on their own 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year away from the gaze of their parents. This is more so in the case of students joining its School of Languages immediately after their XII. There is every possibility that a youngster can go berserk with the new found everything. By everything, I mean every other thing which is normally unavailable for a day scholar living with his parents!

JNU is a fit case for employing a couple of full-time psychiatrists – male and female. Teachers who run the affairs of JNU right from the running of a dhaba selling coffee-tea-snacks, vegetables, fruits, milk, barber shop and the shop of the Vice-Chancellor, the Executive Council etc., at least some of them, have also made use of their positions to find their life-partner on the campus from amongst the students! This is all the more reason why you should have a full-time psychiatrist on the Campus.

The teachers controlling the affairs of JNU are in a powerful position where they can act God – they can make or break a person’s life. I would like to quote from my own life and time on the Campus to prove my point. Since I am made of stronger mettle JNU couldn’t destroy me although it did its best.

BEFORE I PROCEED FURTHER NARRATING MY CASE, I REQUEST EVERY ONE OF YOUR READERS (some of whom might belong to JNU) TO EXPOSE ME BEFORE THE PUBLIC AT LARGE IF THEY HAVE ANY INFORMATION TO THE CONTRARY WHICH WOULD GO TO EXPOSE MY CULPABILITY. YOU CAN SAY I SUFFER FROM A DEATH-WISH. Well.
 
I was a Stenographer in JNU from November 1976 to 29 July 2010, when I was “compulsorily retired without financial loss” based on a trumped up charge of sexually harassing a woman Professor through explicit emails sent on 11 and 12 April 2008 from my Yahoo ID to her Hotmail ID requesting her to render me Axl Rose (an anagram for a basic instinct) written in transliterated Tamil – our Mother Tongue. Just because I tongue-lashed her on 10 April 2008 with a “Just shut up and mind your own business” as I couldn’t stand anymore her inquisitive querying in a private matter, she decided to “teach me the lesson of my life” to settle scores on this perceived insult coming from a Stenographer to her high and mighty “level” of a Professor.
 
Therefore she lodged a false complaint with the Gender Sensitization Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) Cell claiming I had sent her explicit emails as given above, on 29 September 2008. When she was asked to provide a hard copy of the same, she said that she has deleted them both from her inbox and trashcan “by mistake”. This lie was enough for the GSCASH cell run by JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) of which the complainant is a Member, to set up an Enquiry Committee and hold me guilty even without looking at these silly emails. This means the GSCASH proceeded against me based on nothing but the complainant’s lie.
 
The irony is, none of the JNU “authorities” (or anyone else on earth) have seen these two emails written in transliterated Tamil as they were never sent and the Delhi Police Cyber Cell Report (DPCCR) and the Yahoo Report (YR) implicitly proved my innocence as follows: That I had registered my ID on 14 February 2008 and subsequently accessed it on 30 April 2008, 14 & 18 May 2008 making it obvious that, I had not even logged into my account on those two culpable days of 11 and 12 April 2008.
 
Yet the then Vice-Chancellor Comrade BB Bhattacharya, and the Acting Registrar Comrade VK Jain, Comrade Members of GSCASH, GSCASH Screening Committee headed by Comrade Prof Dr Miss Sangeeta Dasgupta, GSCASH Chairman Comrade Prof Dr Miss KD Usha, Comrade Prof Dr Miss Vidhu Verma, Chairman of Appeals Committee, the present VC Comrade Sudhir Kumar Sopory, the present Registrar Comrade Sandeep Chatterjee, held me guilty of having sent obscene emails, and my services were aborted prematurely carrying with it the inherent ignominy of a crime that was never committed. When I pointed out my innocence as contained in the DPCCR and YR to them, Ms Vidhu Verma derisively dismissed it as “technical mumbo-jumbo” and Sandeep Chatterjee contemptuously called it “hyper-technical”.
 
This could have transformed me into a maniac and I could have easily turned violent out of frustration. It was my good fortune that I kept my cool, and I am fighting JNU in the Court of Law.
 
I would earnestly request the media to quiz the JNU authorities on my case and request them to allow you to have a look at the amorous emails sent by me – if they can! They cannot, because I had never sent any such email to the complainant.
 
JNU is now controlled by charlatans who are mediocre, breeding mediocrity all round. The present incident of axe-wielding may not be the last one; it may be followed by more gruesome acts of violence. The authorities, who are the teachers, are solely responsible for such a sorry state of affairs.
 
May be student-activists-turned Comrade Prof Kamal Arun Mitra Chenoy and Comrade Prof Begum Aisha Kidwai might me in a position to throw light on the transformation of JNU into a Joy Now Ugly.

- Sri Aiyer Raju Sreenivasan
 
PS: You can cross-check the information from the JNU people themselves. Their contact numbers can be obtained from the Telephone Directory available on www.jnu.ac.in. If my hunch is correct you will not get any help from them.

The modus operandi adopted by Comrades led by KD Usha (KD) and the complainant was thus: First they accused me of a crime that I had never committed. Later they went around trying to manufacture evidence in its support. Since evidence for an email-never-sent cannot be manufactured, they tried more interesting methods of searching for a web page where an anonymous guy had expressed his desire for Axl Rose and where he had given my email addresses as contact links and where he had written my car as one of the rendezvous for the sexual encounter. To this day I do not know driving, I do not even know riding a two-wheeler, nor do I have a “Driving License” by way of an ID. Just because I have a car in my name, it is not necessary that I must be its driver – it is my children who drive me around. For argument’s sake if I should agree that the “anonymous” guy is myself and that I had expressed my desire for Axl Rose, still, how does it prove that I had sent those two emails on 11 and 12 April 2008. By the same logic, I may have written somewhere else that I do not like Nala Xes, how will it prove that I had sent those two emails on 11 and 12 April 2008. What kind of a hypothesis is this, based on which, you have robbed an innocent man of his daily bread?

KD Usha and gang are sick, pathetic psychopaths; I shudder to think as to what kind of teachers they would be. Even to fight them or even take their names is ranks below my dignity, but then, due to circumstances beyond my control I have to indulge in all this.

They levelled the second charge of “stalking” the complainant, who is known to me and my family members including my children for nearly 20 years right from the time she was an MPhil student at Pondicherry University. She was a guest in my son’s Wedding Reception on 23 November 2007. Why will I stalk her of all the things? They had enlisted the support of a student who vouched to have seen me standing outside on the road at a distance of 30 metres [100 ft.] from her house on the first floor of JNU’s Transit House complex; they enlisted the support of Damayanti Tambey, the sports officer and wife of a Pilot of IAF, held prisoner in a Pakistani jail since the 1971 Indo-Pak War and in whose support I have written many a letters in the newspapers, and AK Pasha who refused to give any testimony in writing although they gave bland statements as follows:

(1) Damayanti Tambey stated that the complainant rushed into her house one fine evening alleging I was after her, and that Damayanti Tambey rushed out to verify but I was not there! [Naturally I could not have been there because I never stalked her at any time. The drama the complainant had enacted in rushing into Damayanti Tambey’s house, she could have easily complained to the onlookers who abound the Campus at all times, especially during the morning and evening hours when one is on their regular walk or at least lodged a complaint with a security guard who are posted at every 200 yards on the Campus]. KD Usha took this as an evidence and recorded it in the Enquiry Committee Report.  

(2) AK Pasha allegedly said over the phone to KD Usha that he saw me on the circular road at one end when the complainant was at the other end and he passed on the information about my being around, to her. This was enough for KD Usha as conclusive evidence of stalking and she had me punished. I shudder to think of what fate must be having in store for her and her family members for her involvement in punishing an innocent man. If she has not started suffering its consequences already, it must be in the pipeline. If she has the courage she should write to the VC accepting her role in having me nailed. I may readily forgive her then, after all, “to forgive is divine”.

KD Usha not only made these extra efforts of trying to manufacture evidence against me. She also lodged a complainant against me with the Delhi Police Women’s Cell at Nanakpura that I was stalking the complainant. The Inspector Mr Rajendra Kumar made me visit the station four times for enquiry and once he made me appear there along with my wife. They let me be as they couldn’t find anything culpable against me! Just imagine the amount of torture I must have endured during these trips to the police station!

In a way I was very happy leaving the Campus on 29 April 2011 body and soul intact by Divine Grace. I have not even claimed my pension benefits which are due to me as I propose to exhaust all avenues available to me to obtain justice preceding that!

Having said all this, for the discerning, it must be jarring somewhere that it somehow does not jell – the accusation of sexual harassment. If they think there cannot be smoke without fire, to them, I would say, they are right. But the Law of the land and that of the institution is not interested in finding out what constitutes smoke, and what constitutes fire. Instead they shot in the dark, to their credit, scored a bull’s eye.