A teacher at St Xavier University said she was forced to quit her job as a teacher for posting bikini photos on her Instagram account a charge the university has denied.
The former assistant professor of St Xavier’s University has told the BBC.
The 31-year-old, who requested not to be named, has accused the university officials of “sexual harassment” and says that she “was bullied, browbeaten, and subjected to moral policing”.
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She has lodged a police complaint and sent a legal notice to the university, which has responded by accusing her of defamation and demanded 990m rupees ($12.4m; £10.5) in compensation.
The assistant professor says she joined the faculty on 9 August 2021 to teach English to undergraduate and postgraduate classes.
Two months later, she was summoned to the vice-chancellor’s office for a meeting.
She was “led into an interrogation room” where she was questioned by a committee comprising Vice-Chancellor Felix Raj, Registrar Ashish Mitra and five women.
She was informed that there had been a complaint against her from the father of a first-year undergrad male student.
“The vice-chancellor said this parent had found his son looking at my photographs on Instagram where I was wearing just my undergarments. He said they were sexually explicit and requested the university to save his son from such vulgarity.”
A piece of paper was circulated amongst the members of the board with “five-six photographs” and she was asked to confirm that they were hers.
The photographs, in which she was wearing a two-piece swimsuit, were selfies taken in her room, she says, adding that she had shared them on Instagram as a “story” – which means that they had disappeared after 24 hours.
But the panel rejected her explanation that the photos were posted on 13 June 2021 – nearly two months before she had even joined the university and before she had accepted any requests from her students to follow her account which is private.
