Girl's father lodges complaint against Visva Bharati VC

Father of a girl student who was allegedly molested and sexually harassed by three of her seniors lodged a police complaint today against the Visva Bharati vice-chancellor and Kala Bhavan principal and the police said it will look into it.

He met Birbhum Superintendent of Police Alok Rajoria during the day and lodged the complaint against Visva Bharati Vice-Chancellor Sushanta Duttagupta and Principal of Kala Bhavan Sisir Sahana.

In his complaint the girl's father alleged that "The principal of Kala Bhavan tried to minimise the matter, raised allegation against my daughter and ordered me to compromise."

"I said I also met the vice-chancellor to get justice but suddenly he offered me money to purchase my clothes and ordered me not to seek help from police. He(VC) told that it would affect my daughter's career," he told PTI.

Siddhinath Gupta, IG (Western Range), when contacted confirmed that the complaint by the girl's father had been received.

"We will look into the allegations and only then decide whether the complaint would be included in the main case or a new case can be started," he said.

Repeated phone calls and text messages to the vice-chancellor by the news agency went unanswered. Efforts to contact Sahana also failed.

The girl, who hails from Sikkim and is a student of Kala Bhavan, had lodged a complaint with the university authorities last week that three seniors of her department and an outsider had sexually harassed her and clicked photos with their mobiles and threatened to blackmail her.

After the incident she had left the university with her father on August 30. She had then returned on September 3 and filed a complaint with the police.

She had agreed to record her statement before a judicial magistrate in Bolpur court under Section 164 of the CrPC but could not do so as she fell sick and was admitted to Burdwan Medical College Hospital.
The three accused students, two from the second year and one from the third year, were arrested and are now under judicial custody. The outsider is yet to be arrested.

A two-member fact-finding team of University Grants Commission comprising the Vice-Chancellor of Tezpur University Mihir Kanti Chaudhuri and UGC joint secretary Ratnabali Banerjee had visited Visva Bharati over the weekend to investigate into the matter.

The UGC team, which arrived on Saturday, left on Sunday after talking to the three lodged in Bolpur sub-divisional correctional home. The team, however, failed to meet the girl in the hospital as her father refused to allow them to meet her saying she was tired and mentally upset repeatedly narrating her ordeal to various people.

The girl's father had alleged that the UGC team had then "threatened" him saying he would be in trouble for not allowing it to meet her. Yesterday the girl's father had said he wanted to meet Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to seek justice for his daughter as he "did not have faith either in the university authorities or the UGC".