‘Registrar being over anxious in hushing up matter’: Gujarat HC observes while hearing queerphobia, harassment allegations at GNLU

The division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha Mayee has also sought details of the number of complaints received and redressed by the ICC, the constitution of the ICC in the past three years and the annual reports of the ICC for the past three years. The court also suggested GNLU to replace three members of the fact-finding committee, who are affiliated with the university, with “independent persons of the society having no concern with the institution at all”.

Trivedi informed the court that while the institute had a functional ICC, it was reconstituted on September 26 this year and prior to the reconstitution, the chairperson of the committee, Prof Anjani Singh Tomar, had invited students to give their statements “but unfortunately nobody came”.

It was also brought to the court’s attention that a fact-finding committee has been formed separately, headed by retired Gujarat DGP Keshav Kumar. However, the court pointed out that the committee also includes the ICC chairperson Tomar, the same person, who in a report dated October 7 submitted to the registrar, had concluded “in one line…that no student came to meet her and depose in relation to the email circulated by the registrar”.

Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal orally remarked to Trivedi and said, “Why have you made her (Tomar) a member (of the fact-finding committee). She says ‘no student came to me’. Is this a way of submitting a report? This is not the way of conducting a fact-finding inquiry. It has to be a confidential inquiry, a discreet inquiry. She is managing everything. Once she is a member of ICC, she cannot be part of the fact finding inquiry. It has to be an independent inquiry. Then you give the information in the newspaper that we have constituted a committee. What kind of committee is this? This is only an eyewash.”

Agarwal added, “The ICC is supposed to prepare an annual report of the action taken by it or the complaints received by it in the entire one year. I used to do it as the chairperson of the ICC. So there has to be an annual report. Place the annual reports for the last three years. Then the constitution of the ICC. Where is the secretariat of the ICC? It should also comprise independent persons, whose integrity can be vouched. All these are not there. Most of the ICCs don’t work in this manner.”

The Chief Justice further said, “Apart from the ICC, there has to be a fact-finding inquiry, independent inquiry into that matter and it should be a discreet inquiry by a person who can meet people without them knowing that he is making an inquiry. It is more about the image of the institution than really taking concrete steps. We know this kind of incident has a bad image on the institutions and institution heads at times try to hush up the matters.”

Trivedi assured the court that they will see to it that the university puts “the house in order”.

The bench in its order went on to record that it is “taking strong exception to the stand of registrar GNLU in the affidavit filed before us” and warned the registrar “to remain careful in future while submitting his affidavit before this court in the matter”.

The court recorded in its order, “We fail to understand as to how and in what manner the institute is dealing with the report which is published on the newspaper on 22.9.2023, more so when the intimation about such alleged incidents was received by the registrar GNLU as per his own admission on September 19, 2023. The manner in which the inquiry is being done by the university, seems to be an effort to cover up the issue to save the image of the institution.”

The court has listed the matter next on November 2. A division bench of the Gujarat High Court in September had taken suo motu cognisance of newspaper reports highlighting GNLU students alleging rape and queerphobia at the institute.