M’lore: Sexual harassment by lectures; Students protest at St Raymonds college

Bellevision Media Network

Mangalore, 22 Jul 2014: The students of St Raymond’s College at Vamanjoor here protested on Tuesday July 22 against the alleged sexual harassment of a student by a lecturer.

Harish, a Kannada lecturer in the college has been accused of harassing a PU student by sending her lewd text messages, trying to touch her and so on for the past one year. The incident came to light on Monday late evening after the girl attempted suicide and her parents lodged a complaint with the Kankanady police.

A student of the college told to that the teacher Hareesh Kumar used to insist the female students stay after the class hours and chat with them. He always hated the male students. He used to hit them for silly reasons even though they are quite old to study in the degree college. Even though he is more than 40 years old and he was not married.  Girl students had his special attention and he used to SMS many female students.

 

Addressing the media after the meeting, principal of the college Sr Cecilia D’Souza said, "Harish has been a teacher here for 12 years and till now we have never received any complaint of sexual harassment or anything against him. The teacher was strict, which was not liked by some of the students."

At the same time, another group of students came in support of the lecturer and insisted that no action must be taken against him. The group supporting him and the one against him shouted slogans outside the college.

According to the students the college is backing the lecturer only because he used exercise his power next to the principal. The principal, had given away majority of the disciplinary responsibilities to the lecturer. Hence the students had the fear of him due to which they never used to complain against him in any matters.