Porn floods WhatsApp teaching group of Lucknow University

LUCKNOW: Lucknow University BA (VI semester) students on Saturday got stunned when obscene contents — pornogaphic material and lewd remarks about female students and even faculty members — started flashing in a WhatsApp group created by undergraduate students of ancient Indian history and archaeology (AIHA) department.
The chief proctor of the university lodged a complaint with the Hasanganj police station for lodging an FIR in this regard on Sunday. The miscreant is yet to be identified.
The pornographic images and obscene messages were posted late on Saturday night in the WhatsApp group that was created by a female student on the direction of the faculty for sharing paper presentations.
Around 170 BA students were added via a link circulated by the teachers to get automatically added to the group.
The person who posted the messages and visuals exited the group immediately after doing it. He entered the group again using the link and posted similar lewd content. Students say that the mobile number of the miscreant which was showing in the group belonged to a male student of the same class. When the latter was asked, however, he denied his involvement.
“Around 11.58pm on Saturday, the first sexually explicit picture was posted on the group with the name and phone number of our male classmate. The obscene picture was followed by a message that targeted four girl students through lewd messages,” said a girl student not wanting to be named.
She said that the person continued with abusive and objectionable language for female students of the class and teachers as well.
In the screenshots of the group shared by students with TOI, a number of messages from female students requesting faculty late at night to look into the matter and take strict action could be seen.
Even after repeated requests, the unruly element dropped a second message abusing four male students of the class and went on to tarnish the name of a faculty member. He then again posted pornographic images.
“When the abuses crossed all limits and objectionable words were used for our faculty member, I took to Twitter, tagging vice-chancellor Prof AK Rai and dean, student welfare, Prof Poonam Tandon to look into the matter,” said BA student Abhinav Kumar Srivastava. He said the girl students were stressed and scared and having sleepless nights.
“The unruly element posted porn images, wrote disrespectful messages and immediately exited the group. He joined back again with a different name and number to drop messages all over again,” said a BA student Ankit Singh.
When no action was taken by the LU authorities, nearly 50% of the students took an exit from the group in protest. Later in the evening, a complaint was forwarded by AIHA HoD Prof Piyush Bhargava to the LU proctor office on the basis of which an application for an FIR was given by chief Proctor Dinesh Kumar at Hasanganj police station.
“We have lodged a police complaint with the Hasanganj police station in this regard. Also, we have shared a screenshot of the WhatsApp group and the phone number which was used along with the name and contact number of the student who was named in the obscene messages,” the proctor said, adding “no such nonsense will be tolerated. We are also investigating the matter at our end.”
It is the second such incident in the AIHA department. Earlier also, similar indiscipline had surfaced in another WhatsApp group in January in BA (V semester).