GNLU rape-harassment allegations: High-level panel says scary allegations

Ahmedabad: The Gandhinagar-based Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) has informed the High Court that a High-Level Review Committee (HLRC) headed by former Supreme Court judge Indu Malhotra will be constituted to assess the institution's performance in the last five years.

The assurance came in the wake of allegations of harassment of a queer student and rape of a female student at the varsity. A division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha P Mayee is hearing a suo motu PIL (public interest litigation) on the issue.

Earlier, the bench had described the findings of a committee, which looked into the students' allegations, as "scary".

During a hearing on the suo motu PIL on Thursday, Advocate General Kamal Trivedi, appearing for the GNLU, informed the bench that the governing council of the university met on March 23 and resolved to constitute the HLRC.

Apart from Justice Indu Malhotra, the committee will have Attorney General R Venkataramani and State Finance Department's former additional chief secretary MM Srivastava as its members.

Moreover, Trivedi said a sub-committee will also be appointed by the varsity "for the reconstitution of a transparent and vigilant Internal Complaints Committee". It will consist of Additional Advocate General Manisha Luvkumar Shah and senior advocate Asim Pandya.

"The Governing Council was extremely concerned about the welfare of the students of the university and therefore University should take all possible measures to create a safe and secure environment among the students so that they should not feel inhibited to come forward with such experiences," Trivedi told the bench while reading out the affidavit of GNLU.

To address these issues, the Governing Council has resolved to constitute the HLRC with the aim of "assessing past five years performance of the university in the field of academics, administration, finance as well as safety and security aspects of students and for suggesting further correcting measures to be undertaken in the future", he said.

Trivedi further submitted that the reports of both these committees will be placed before the Executive Council of the GNLU.

He added that the council also directed the university administration to immediately appoint a full-time Registrar for GNLU.

After taking into consideration GNLU's submissions, Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal directed the varsity to submit an Action Taken Report before the next date of hearing on April 29.

During the last hearing held on February 28, the bench had described the findings of a committee, which looked into the allegations of harassment of a queer student and rape of a female student at GNLU, as "scary".

After going through parts of the report, submitted in a sealed cover, the bench had expressed shock at "incidents of molestation, rape, discrimination, homophobia, favouritism, suppression of voices" going on at the Gandhinagar-based institute.

"This report is really scary," the court had said while hearing the suo motu PIL taken up by it based on a newspaper report dated September 22 last year.

(Inputs from PTI)