Procedural violations in the case of sexual harassment of 17 female students

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) has alleged procedural irregularities in its investigation into a sexual harassment complaint lodged by 47 female students with the university’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) following a freshers’ party.

In a letter to vice-chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) accused the committee of watering down the issue by treating it as an “individual grievance” rather than a collective grievance.

The union said 47 female students from the Center for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS) on Wednesday filed a collective complaint with the ICC over alleged sexual harassment and violence during the CSSS freshmen party at the Convention Center on Tuesday (October 22).

However, the complainants were told that presiding officer Vandana Mishra would not meet all the victims together and asked them to appoint five representatives to represent the case, the union said.

During the ICC meeting on Thursday, the four student representatives arrived late, taking advantage of which the ICC members tried to intimidate the sole petitioner by forcing her to testify in private, JNUSU alleged in its letter on Friday.

The union said it was an attempt to undermine the collective nature of the grievance. “Survivors do not agree with this because the complaint was filed collectively, but they tried to break it down into five separate incidents of harassment,” the letter said.

According to JNUSU, during the testimony, the complainant was reportedly asked “irrelevant and intimidating questions” such as: “Why didn’t you go to the head of your center first?” and “Who told you about the ICC process?”

The letter went on to say: “These questions are outside the jurisdiction of the ICC and were intended to threaten the survivor and obtain information from her about the case in order to weaken our case.”

The union also raised concerns that an employee had videotaped the complainant during a confidential meeting, compromising her anonymity.

JNUSU officials and CSSS students intervened, demanding that the JNUSU representative be allowed to attend the survivors’ depositions, that an injunction be issued without naming the survivors, and that the complaint be treated as a class action. They also insisted that any videos taken during the confidential meeting be deleted immediately.

However, Mishra reportedly rejected these requests and brought in outside officers from the Campus Security Office (CSO), which JNUSU alleged was an attempt to “cover up” the accused.