JNUSU raises concerns about handling of sexual harassment complaint filed by 47 students

The Vasant Kunj North police said it had received a complaint on Tuesday regarding a scuffle but no FIR was registered. In a letter to Pandit, JNUSU accused the committee of diluting the case by treating it as an “individual complaint” rather than a collective grievance. While the students sought to be heard collectively, ICC Presiding Officer Vandana Mishra allegedly instructed them to select five representatives instead. The union claimed this decision undermined the case’s collective aspect.

During the ICC meeting on Thursday, four student representatives arrived late, taking advantage of which the ICC members tried to “intimidate” the lone complainant into giving a solo deposition, the JNUSU claimed. “The survivors disagree with this because the complaint was filed as a collective, but they were trying to dilute this into five individual cases of harassment,” the letter read.

According to JNUSU, during deposition, the complainant was reportedly asked “irrelevant and intimidating questions”, such as “why didn’t you go to your centre’s chairperson first” and “who told you about the ICC process”.

The letter stated, “These questions do not concern the jurisdiction of the ICC, and were meant to threaten the survivors and get information from her about the case, to weaken our cause.” The union also raised concerns that a staff member recorded a video of the complainant during the confidential session, compromising her anonymity.

Following this, CSSS students and JNUSU representatives demanded that a JNUSU representative be allowed to sit for future depositions, any recordings from the session be deleted, and a restraining order be issued to safeguard the identities of the complainants.
However, as per the letter, Mishra denied these requests and brought in additional staff from the Campus Security Office (CSO) – an act JNUSU claimed was a deliberate effort to “shield the accused”. “This was a clear case of victim-blaming, and an attempt to shield the perpetrators,” the union stated, adding that it demanded Mishra’s removal as the ICC Presiding Officer.

In the letter, JNUSU urged the university administration to enforce a transparent and impartial inquiry process, with a student representative from the Gender Sensitization Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) included in all proceedings.

While there was no immediate response on the allegations from JNU vice-chancellor, Mishra said the committee “follows all procedures”, reported PTI.

A police officer, meanwhile, said, “In the complaint, one group claimed that the other passed lewd comments on students who were partying. When they confronted them, the members of the other group got physically and verbally abusive and forced them to delete the videos of a couple of seniors passing comments. However, the first group alleged that no comments were passed and that the scuffle was initiated by students who were partying.”

“Later, both groups gave in writing that they don’t want the police to further pursue the matter and would take it up with JNU’s internal committee. Hence, no FIR was lodged,” the officer added.