Anger, concern among KGMU ranks, alumni as ‘love jihad’ claims widen, vandalism shakes campus

A day after the episode on January 9, with just a couple of days of campaigning left for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, the BJP sent off Yadav, the vice-chairman of the UP Women’s Commission, to Maharashtra as “a star campaigner”. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath held a meeting with KGMU V-C Sonia Nityanand on Monday, where a probe into the “love jihad” allegations on the campus was transferred from a committee set up by the university to the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF).

On Tuesday, the university submitted facts related to the January 9 incident to the Uttar Pradesh Home Department for an FIR. While the doctors had set a deadline of Tuesday evening for the registration of an FIR, no case had been filed till Wednesday afternoon.

On the KGMU’s vast campus, the students and resident doctors are watching the sequence of events with dismay. They talk of getting inquiries from family, friends and relatives, asking if the allegations of a conversion racket are true, and if the campus is safe; receiving forwards containing memes and video messages on the allegations; plus videos of the ruckus on the campus by the Yadav-led group, which accused KGMU of “failing to protect its women students”.

What set off the allegations was a complaint by a woman resident doctor that a fellow resident doctor and MD student, Dr Rameez Uddin Nayak, with whom she was in a relationship, had tried to forcibly convert her and “hidden” the fact that he was already married.

The matter came to the attention of KGMU authorities after the woman reportedly tried to take her life on December 17. The university’s Vishakha committee to check sexual harassment at the workplace called Nayak and the woman complainant before it. However, after the first appearance, Nayak went “missing”. His parents were next arrested by police on the charges of forcible conversion, and Nayak was finally held on January 9 from his residence in Lucknow. All three continue to be in jail.

Soon, allegations started doing the rounds of a larger “love jihad” network on the campus.

“We don’t have time for a breather here, and now there are calls from home, family, friends that ‘Love jihad network chal raha hai (a love jihad network is on)’. We don’t know anything about it, nor are we bothered about it. It is up to police to investigate,” says Ranvijay Patel, the acting president of the King George University Resident Doctors’ Association.

Patel says that even if true, the allegations against Nayak were “an isolated incident in the Pathology Department (where he and the woman worked)”. “The incident of ruckus and vandalism at the V-C’s office is a bigger safety concern,” he says, adding that this is especially true for women residents, for whom the protesters claimed to be “concerned”.

The Resident Doctors’ Association along with the teachers’ and employees’ associations has raised the demand that the government lodge an FIR into the January 9 vandalism.

At a canteen where resident doctors are taking a small break, the January 9 incident is a fevered topic of discussion. A senior woman resident doctor says that before the allegations surfaced against Nayak, there was not even a whisper of “love jihad”. “We support the woman who has accused Nayak of forcible conversion, but we had no reason to believe any such thing before she tried to tried to commit suicide. The January 9 episode has left our parents worried. We are here and know about the situation, but they are reading all kinds of things on social media,” she says.

Families of doctors and students who live in far-off places are more worried, she adds, because for many the tension ties up with what happened at the R G Kar Medical College in Kolkata, where a woman doctor was found murdered and the campus became a battleground of protests. Some changes were made in the security arrangements after the Kolkata episode, but now fears about safety have revived, the doctor says.

Ranvijay Patel says it is the first time an incident of vandalism has happened on the campus since he joined KGMU 10 years ago. “I did my MBBS here and am doing my MD now. I have never heard of the V-C office being attacked by outsiders… It is hampering the image of the institution.”

Dr Aman Verma of Pulmonary Department, who is sitting next to him, adds: “Sirf ussi nazar se kaam karna bahut mushkil ho jayega (Just from that perspective, it is getting difficult to work).”

K K Singh, Professor, Surgery Department, and president of the Teachers’ Association, who headed the panel the university initially set up to probe whether the allegations against Nayak were part of a larger “network”, also expresses regret over how the incident is being blown up. The university set up the panel to quell allegations that other faculty members were involved in a “conversion racket”, with links also being suggested with the banned PFI (Popular Front of India).

With the matter now handed over to the STF, the rumours haven’t stopped, Singh says, and the university has been getting queries from alumni settled in different parts of the world. The list of KGMU’s alumni is long, including over 30 Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan awardees, and politicians such as BJP leader and Chief Minister of Tripura Manik Saha and UP Minister of State (Independent charge), Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Arun Kumar Saxena.

V-C Nityanand, who is much respected in her field of haematology, also did her MD from KGMU, followed by a PhD from Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Before she took over as V-C, KGMU, in August 2023, she was Director, Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow.

These days, near Dr Nityanand’s office and the administrative block are parked a police vehicle, with personnel deployed across the campus.