Jawaharlal Nehru University’s students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar continues to make headlines. It seems that the university’s administration had held Kanhaiya the year before for allegedly “misbehaving” with a girl and “threatening” her.
The incident occured in June, 2015. The girl (who was a student at JNU) asked Kanhaiya (who at the time wasn’t the students’ union president) to not urinate in the open inside the campus.
The girl, who now teaches at Delhi University, alleged that Kanhaiya “misbehaved” with her when she raised her voice. She also complained that he called her a “psychopath” and threatened her with dire consequences.
The JNU administration had found Kanhaiya guilty after it held a proctorial inquiry. “The university has found Kanhaiya Kumar guilty of misbehaving with an ex-student (female) and threatening her. This act is serious in nature and unbecoming of a student of JNU and calls for a strict disciplinary action against him. Keeping his career prospects in mind, the Vice Chancellor has taken a lenient view in the matter,” said the office order issued on 16 October, 2015 by the then chief proctor Krishna Kumar.
“Unzipping your private part in public and urinating on road—are these your revolutionary tools to uphold a female’s dignity? I am shocked to see how a misogynist like Kanhaiya is being hailed as revolutionary,” said the girl in an open letter that is circulating online.
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All India Students Federation (AISF), the outfit that Kanhaiya belongs to, said in a statement that “talk about public urination and threatening are being spread to malign Kanhaiya’s image. He had a verbal argument with the girl following which she had registered a complaint.”
The statement also said, “We do respect the girl’s right to criticise Kanhaiya but we want to reiterate that he has always stood for gender justice. Also, when the incident took place, he was not the president of the students’ union.”
