3 senior Visva-Bharati officials dismissed from service for 'tampering with' minutes of meeting

Three senior officials of Visva-Bharati, including former officiating vice-chancellor Sabujkali Sen, have been dismissed from service for alleged tampering of a resolution recorded during the institute's executive council (EC) meeting in 2018.

The decision was taken by the council on Friday evening, based on the recommendations made by a one-man committee of Justice Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, set up for the purpose, an EC member said.

Before making his recommendations, Justice Bhattacharya, a former judge of the Calcutta High Court, had gone through the findings of another inquiry committee in the case, which had concluded that Sen and two others "tampered with the recording of an EC meeting held in February 2018".

Former officiating registrar Sougata Chattopadhyay and ex-finance officer Samit Roy are the other two institute officials who were removed by the council, the EC member said.

Sen was appointed as the officiating vice-chancellor (VC) on February 2, 2018, days after Prof Swapan Dutta retired from the post. Her tenure, however, was set to last only for a few days, as the EC, during its meeting on February 17 that year, decided to anoint another senior official, Asha Mukherjee, as the next acting VC.

The former officiating VC, with the help of Chattopadhyay and Roy, allegedly "tampered with the minutes of the meeting" to be able to extend her term.

The council, during an emergency meeting two days ago, dismissed the officials from service with immediate effect, just three days before Sen's retirement.

Terming the EC's decision as "vindictive, premeditated, unfair," Sen claimed that she was not given time to produce documents and defend herself.

All three officials were intimated about the central varsity's decision over e-mail, the EC member added.