Manonmaniam Sundaranar University sacks professor for sexual harassment

CHENNAI: Manonmaniam Sundaranar University (MSU), a state-run institution in Tirunelveli, has ordered a professor charged with sexual harassment of a research scholar to go on compulsory retirement. A meeting of the university syndicate took the decision on Thursday.

In October, the university registrar Santosh Baboo got an anonymous complaint, along with a compact disc or audio recordings, alleging that P Govindaraju, 58, then head of the department of communications, had made lewd remarks at a female research scholar over phone. The university soon suspended him on charges of sexual harassment.

The university’s internal complaints committee formed under the Vishakha guidelines verified the audro samples and found the allegations to be true, said Baboo. The report was tabled in the syndicate meeting which unanimously resolved that the professor should be placed under compulsory retirement, he said.

Interestingly, Govindaraju was a member of an earlier internal complaints committee that dealt with sexual harassment complaints on the campus.

He was named as one of the members of the organising committee of a two-day national conference on ‘Media literacy in the digital age’, scheduled on January 31, 2019.

The conference is being organized by the department of communication. Some faculty members questioned how Govindaraju can be part of the committee for an acdemic function when he was facing sexual harassment charges.

Responding to this, Baboo said that the invite that was shared with the faculty was an earlier one on which Govindaraju’s name was printed by mistake. “We have deleted his name and made the correction. He is no longer on the organising committee,” Baboo said.

Baboo said Thursday’s syndicate meeting also decided to terminate the services of three professors — R Ramesh, N Poornalingam and J Jenitha — of English department following complaints that they were not working as expected and they were not “student friendly”.

On getting complaints against the three professors, the university formed a disciplinary committee consisting of external members. The committee, after two sittings to go into the complaints, submitted a report to the university.

“The report was tabled in the syndicate meeting which decided to terminate their services,” Baboo said.