Video from IIT-Kharagpur shows professor abusing SC/ST preparatory students

Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, April 27

Multiple videos of an Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur professor abusing her Dalit, Adivasi, and disabled students have shocked the internet, with many demanding her immediate termination.

Students of IIT-Bombay’s anticaste Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle posted a video online the professor, whom the group identified as Associate Professor Seema Singh of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, as referring to the group using some expletives as she takes the  IIT’s Preparatory Course for SC/ST (scheduled caste /scheduled tribes) and PD (physically disabled) candidates.

She's heard repeatedly calling the students in her class names and dares them to report her to the Ministry of Women and Child Care and Ministry of SC/ST/Minorities. A second video, also doing the rounds online, shows her demanding that they say “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. A third video shows her yelling at a student who wants to be excused from the online class on account of her grandfather's death.

The Instagram post of the APPSC demands her immediate dismissal and that she should be booked under the SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Act.

“She is in complete cognizance of her actions and proclaims immunity from any disciplinary actions and consequences,” the post says. “She uses the hyper nationalism to cloud her casteist mentality and forces the students to stand up for the national anthem which the Supreme Court of India had declared is not mandatory. However, even when students complied to her demand, she still uses it to abuse and throw casteist slurs at them again and again,” the post says.

“Another video shows how she discarded a request from a student who lost her grandfather to COVID-19 to excuse her from attending classes for few days, asking how does it affect the student. This shows complete disregard to the student’s emotion and claims to be the apex authority of the course,” the post reads.

NDTV quoted some sources as having said that the institute, IIT-Kharagpur, had taken cognizance of the incident.