The vice chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has made headlines after labelling an alleged sexual harassment case a "simple incident of eve-teasing".

VC Girish Chandra Tripathi believes that the incident was "deliberately staged" a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to his constituency.

The students resorted to protest after a female student was molested and a security guard refused to help her. Hundreds of female students of BHU are protesting and demanding assurance from the administration about their safety inside the campus in Varanasi.

According to VC Tripathi, the protest was politically motivated and "some people with vested interests and ulterior motives have triggered this incident". He also said that the molestation was done to trigger this fiasco before the PM Modi's visit.

The female students have claimed that there is no girl in the university who has not been harassed or molested on the campus. But VC Girish Chandra Tripathi has a different story to tell. In an interview, he made these statements:

But sometimes issues are there and some issues are created. This issue was created. I think this issue was created by outsiders and the shape it took is what is more unfortunate than the initial incident itself.
The students stood for something that was made to look like the truth but was a lie.
If force was used on girls, I have no idea.
First of all, it is not an incident of molestation, it is one of eve-teasing.
This is such a big campus, anything can happen anywhere. We cannot assign a guard to every student.
The use of force was against criminals not girl students. It was such a situation that force had to be used.
If we are going to listen to every demand of every girl we won't be able to run the university.
It is good that the curfew timings for MMV and Triveni girls' hostels is 8 pm, in one other girls' hostel, it is 6 pm.
Professor Tripathi, however, says the student protests are over a minor incident.
Security for boys and girls can never be at par.

BHU protest: 10 statements made by VC Tripathi that prove silence could have been golden

Girish Chandra Tripathi, the VC of Banaras Hindu University, feels that the protests were "politically motivated" and the whole event was just a "simple incident of eve-teasing".