Dean alleges harassment over PhD thesis row in Kerala High Court

C.N. Vijayakumari, Head of the Sanskrit department and Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at University of Kerala (KU), has approached the Kerala High Court alleging that she was being harassed by multiple stakeholders over her not signing a PhD thesis of a research scholar.

Following this, the High Court directed the university’s standing counsel to get instructions. A Bench of Justice V.G. Arun also observed that the court had restrained the police from arresting her after she filed a bail plea in connection with the case.

She had been charged under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2015 in a case charged by the police regarding alleged casteist remarks she made against Vipin Vijayan, a research scholar. He had alleged that she ‘refused to sign his thesis after his open defence and made derogatory remarks when he approached her again to complete the Ph.D process’.

Rebutting this, she had alleged that that the complaint was fabricated and politically motivated, intended to pressurise her into certifying an ‘invalid thesis’, and that she was being subjected to harassment and coercion for performing her academic duties during an open defence of his PhD thesis last month. She claimed in her petition that she was being pressurised to ‘settle’ the matter and that a few Syndicate members attempted to coerce her into signing the documents pertaining to the research scholar’s thesis.

The matter has been posted for hearing on November 17.

She had contended before the court that the research scholar, who is an active Students’ Federation of India (SFI) supporter, along with his associates intimidated, abused, and tried to coerce her into approving the thesis that was found to contain serious academic defects. On her refusal, a false and motivated complaint was lodged against her, leading to the registration of the present crime’. The candidate performed unsatisfactorily and he was unable to answer even the basic and fundamental questions posed by the audience, and the thesis presented by him was found to contain several serious methodological, factual, and conceptual errors, she said.