Re: HARROWING INCIDENT DATED 24 OCTOBER 2018

[Sushant Singh]

1.         People who have presented themselves as defenders of Minority rights and flag bearers of marginalized people are so silent today. We have been tutored about the Constitution, Death Penalty, Criminal Law, Jurisprudence by ‘Best Faculty on Campus’ but somewhere either I failed to understand their method or their hypocrisy is open now. It is easy to preach about it in a four-walled classroom but when it comes to abiding by oneself they crush the very same principle they instill among students.

2.         I appreciate and pay my respect to all those faculty members and alumni who went to meet Digvijay in hospital but I condemn those people who preferred to stay back in their houses for their comfort. I must remind you all that these distinguished faculty members never hesitate to fly abroad for conferences, workshops etc. on issues pertaining to marginalized Section of the Community. On one hand, we have Project 39A going inside the Campus that talks about ‘values of equal justice and equal opportunity by removing economic and social barriers’ but no stand has been taken by them on this issue so far.

Self-proclaimed, god figure teachers who have piled up credentials to back to their “Social Activist” are neither worried about their own students nor they have said anything or have objected their collogues of their mistreatment/misconduct. I hope you will come forward and stand by what you are well known for.

 

3.         I am shocked to see how our College’s Apex Authority’s concerns are only limited to avoid media coverage but not to resolve the issue that has one’s life at stake.

 

4.         I must promise you that If anything, anything to Digvijay I will not forgive anyone responsible for the same and I personally will fight tooth and nail for justice without considering any repercussions that may follow in the due course.  

 

5.         Through this email, I would also like to inform all the authorities that Our official email ID should not be shut for any reason whatsoever because this is the only medium we (Student Body) have a forum to interact and to be connected with our roots. IF funds are not sufficient then kindly make use of the ‘Alumni fund’ available and bring all other fund details on the table so that we can discuss it in detail. I humbly request you not to shut our voice by blocking our official email id’s.

NOTE: We the students of NLUD would like to meet authorities and discuss about this horrendous case where one’s life is at stake due to maladministration of justice. Kindly let us all know at the convenient time, today or tomorrow.

Warm Regards,

Sushant Inderjeet Singh
Advocate, Delhi High Court,
Alumnus, National Law University Delhi.

M:8285048947

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 1:14 PM Balaji Harish <Balaji....@nludelhi.ac.in> wrote:

The allegations made by Digvijay in his email are serious and shocking. It is absolutely disgusting that the same people who teach us about justice and due process failed to adhere to these standards that they preach about. It is absolutely disgusting that such people are entrusted with an obligation to determine the guilt of someone accused of sexual misconduct. I completely agree with whatever Akshat has stated in his trailing email. What is worse is that by acting in the manner as alleged by Digvijay, the Internal Complaints Committee also jeopardises the cases of actual, true incidents, if and when, or ever, that they are taken up by the ICC.

Digvijay's email certainly raises questions that go to the very core of the ICC. In particular, it calls into question the compliance of the ICC with Rule 7(b), (c), (e), (f) and (g) of the ICC Rules available on the website. The ICC must explain the inordinate delay in delivering a copy of the order and recommendations to Digvijay, as alleged - why wasn't the order drafted and delivered to the complainant, respondent and executive authority within a period of one week from conclusion of the oral hearings, as required by Rule 12 of the ICC Rules? As a general matter, upon the conclusion of appellate proceedings, why do the Rules state that all materials placed by any party to the ICC hearings must be destroyed? What are you trying to keep secret, especially when there are serious allegations of not following due process? In light of the serious allegations made by Digvijay in his email, it is time for the ICC to provide answers. The entire ICC must step down or all the members must be dismissed for failing to carry out their obligations in the prescribed manner, following due process and natural justice. The very same people who preach about injustices and activism are now coming out as two-faced people who are concerned with proprieties and their image in the public eye, but fail to question and set aside their own biases behind close doors.

I too had resolved not to engage in these email threads, but the recent past has revealed a distressing side of my alma mater. I wish Digvijay a swift recovery and the strength to face the injustices that he has alleged. I sincerely hope that there is no long-lasting effect that will impede his future, as far as the extreme step he was compelled to take is concerned. I also extend my professional services to Digvijay, if he wishes to take this matter to an external forum.

In solidarity with Digvijay

Balaji

On Thu, 25 Oct 2018 at 10:17, Akshat Agarwal <akshat.a...@nludelhi.ac.in> wrote:

This is perhaps the most disturbing and distressing news one could ever get from their alma mater. I am shaking with disbelief and anger as I read this. The fact that evidence was tampered with and the ICC went out of its way to find Digvijay guilty to confirm pre-existing biases in the absence of cogent evidence is damning and those who were entrusted with this position of trust and power must immediately be held accountable. 

There has been much talk on campus in the five years I spent there about justice, punishment and reform. Passionate debates about the death penalty and the disproportionate wrath of the criminal 'justice' system against individuals from marginalised communities are bandied about in eloquent terms, but who gives a fuck about their classmates? People fetishised the idea of travelling to the interiors of the country to interview families of those unfairly punished by the courts. But scant regard was extended to their own peers who face subtle and not so subtle discrimination every day on campus and are rendered invisible or painted with colours of constant suspicion. I suppose its only fun when you interact with the person in the capacity of the benevolent law student arriving from Delhi, that you can only engage with discrimination as something that happens to people far removed from your lives and only in the environs where you think discrimination breeds. Because examining these on campus involves a lot more introspection, and confronting one's own biases. My mind goes back to debates in class where socio-economically and educationally privileged and vocal students assumed the worst intent behind statements by peers from different backgrounds - refusing to engage when the other side could not keep up with their heavily jargon loaded vocabularies. Perhaps intellectual masturbation and six figure salaries are all we are best of the best at. Convicted murderers deserve humane treatment, ties to friends and family and dignity while they await their legally approved sentence. Have we extended any humane treatment as a community to those accused of offences around us? Does doing so make us less noble and knock us a few inches off our SJW high horse? Are believing and supporting victims and ensuring some minimum degree of dignity for the accused so mutually exclusive that they cannot be reconciled? Because then we might as well dispense with courses on criminal justice and procedure. 

.

Digvijay's case is a travesty. From his account it is clear that he fought an uphill battle to even make his case and have it considered seriously. The ICC is an extremely important body on campus, and as recent events have shown, one that is desperately required to function actively. But it cannot rely on show trials and procedural lapses. Not in a University where we pride ourselves in our activism and our outspokenness against injustice. The ICC ought to be the paragon of neutrality and due process, as a legitimate means for people to seek redress. It cannot share the biases prevalent amongst the general student body with regards to caste and economic status, or it must be expunged of all such elements.  

I remain hopeful for Digvijay's swift recovery and wish his family some much needed peace and strength in this traumatic time. I hope we can wake up as a community, specially those of us fond of talking about social issues on Facebook and other social networking sites and introspect into our own biases and the harms they cause those around us. NLUD has a myriad of problems - lack of student body autonomy, rampant sexual misconduct and a huge, huge iceberg of discrimination that exists just beneath the surface. It is a many headed hydra that has at its heart a disregard for others, an obsession with one's projected image and a shocking lack of compassion. This has reared its ugly head many times on campus and this is its most horrifying manifestation yet. I truly hope everyone on this email thread takes ten minutes today to think about this. We must address this issue and ensure our processes are fairer and more inclusive, that as a community we live by the ideals we love so much to talk about in class and outside class. Let us think about our peers, not just our friends, as human beings who all deserve a minimum degree of dignity and might have their own personal battles going on that we cannot see.

Apologies for the long email. I had vowed never to engage in these threads once I graduated. But I could not help but express my distress at these events and my shock and rage at the ICC's functioning and my support for Digvijay and his friends in any future course of action where they seek justice for an unfair and discriminatory proceedings in our ostensible haven of legal wisdom. 

In Sorrow and Solidarity,

Akshat

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 9:04 AM Devagya Jha <devagy...@nludelhi.ac.in> wrote:

Extremely saddening that he was forced to take this step. My heart goes out for his family and how his parents would feel when they are informed. This goes against every thing that the same people preach in law school. If people have been made to resign on the basis of charges of sexual harassment made against them, are these not equally serious? Would be very interested in knowing how the self-proclaimed mother is dealt with.

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 5:04 AM, Mr Harshvardhan <harshva...@nludelhi.ac.in> wrote:

This is extremely distressing and infuriating. It is difficult to imagine the constant, unending mental torture Digvijay must have gone through in the preceding months that caused him to take this step or the scale of the tragedy for his family. I would like to request his friends to please convey any assistance of any manner that can be rendered by the rest of us.

I can't help but think that this tragedy  is a result of the tendency to ignore the intersectionality of disadvantages that I think exists in our college, a refusal to realise that caste, economic affluence, sex, fluency in english etc. are all axes along which privilege and exclusion acts in our college and while these may at times overlap, in many cases they crosscut each other.

There are a large number of people (both men and women) who feel excluded from the mainstream discourse in the college because they never have the confidence to engage in it owing to one or many of the many kinds of disabilities they suffer from. They do not feel that their views have as much value as of the fluent english speaking, privileged educated people who generally dominate the discourse and consequently their entire existence is one of diffidence and apathy.

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:20 AM Yash Solanki <yash.so...@nludelhi.ac.in> wrote:

Dear all,

On 24^th October 2018 at 3:19 P.M. Digvijay Kumar sent the attached e-mail to some of his friends. The e-mail was also sent to the Vice-Chancellor and other members of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). Within minutes I rushed to Digvijay’s room to only to find it locked from inside. Digvijay had by this time consumed a Poisonous liquid. We immediately rushed Digvijay to a hospital in Dwarka in Emergency Ward. Considering his critical condition, he has been put under 48 hours of medical observation.

Before you proceed to read the e-mail, I would like to provide you with some context to it and what has transpired till the time of sending this email.

In April Digvijay received a notice from the ICC regarding some events that had occurred during Kairos. What followed was an ICC proceeding that not only facilitated falsification of records, demonizing of the persons involved, a complete denial of audi alterem partem by ICC and its members – issues that are addressed in Digvijay’s e-mail.

Today Mr Maheshwar Singh, Mr Siddharth Dahiya and Mr Mukul Raizada visited the hospital and were of assistance. However, no institutional action was promised or advocated to address the issue from any authority in the University.

As soon as we could gather our minds, while Digvijay still remained admitted, we visited the Registrar NLUD residence at around 22:00 Hrs to discuss the issue. He was not present at his residence and we could not find his personal number to reach.

Mr Siddharth Dahiya was approached next with the request that the registrar provides us with a personal meeting. However, we were informed that the registrar was not in Delhi.

We then approached the Vice-Chancellor’s residence at around 22:15 where we met him and updated him on what had happened and narrated the past 6 months of mental hardship that Digvijay was put through, which included public shaming, social ostracisation and denial of records of the proceedings. The Registrar in the past had also conveyed to Digvijay that when the appeal proceedings starts the college would become stringent and defend its decision since its a question of their (ICC members) reputation. The discussion concluded when the Vice-chancellor assured us that tomorrow morning he would convene a meeting to address the issue.

The purpose of the e-mail is that people know about the facts and not the rumours doing the rounds.

Regards,

Yash Solanki and other well wishers of Digvijay.

--

Balaji Harish Iyer (19LLB10)

National Law University,
Sector 14, Dwarka,
New Delhi (110078),
NCR, INDIA.

(+91)8743000741
balaji...@gmail.com

[VIKRRANT SINGH GURJAR]

To the NLUD Community,

We stand in solidarity with the victim who was denied fair trial for the sexual harassment allegations against him and a long drawn legal battle that he tried fighting but miserably failed. The initial email shows how evidence has tampered, arguments manipulated and the main point being the lack of a fair trial. Especially in a case where he comes from an underprivileged background. When a charge like this was discovered to be mishandled by our institutional body, it became too late by then because he had suffered a lot due to the label of a convict. 

We understand the sensitive nature of the claims and we are talking strictly with respect to a fair request of a fair trial. If a trial is going on with the ICC, the victim and the accused both should be given a platform and access to a fair trial without any bias, cornering, and ostracization. The ICC is supposed to be a judge of the case, not an advocate for the victim. Keeping that in mind, we must tread carefully, at least with such  trials, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Best,

Vikrrant Singh Gurjar

Harsh Chaudhary

Anmol Dwivedi

Shubham Jain (67)

Mukul Verma

Vaibhav Raj

Karan Vijay

Abhay

Animesh

Aadarsh

Rahul Kumar

Anshul Rathi

Anshul Gondale

Anmol Dhawan

[Yash Solanki]

Dear all,

After the events of the last couple of days, we would like to make a few things clear. To begin with, our grievances are against institutional bias, procedural irregularities and unfair treatment meted out to Digvijay Kumar. We do not intend to discredit the testimonies of the complainants, nor do we mean to cast any aspersions on anyone. Secondly, our fight is against the university administration's biases and falsehoods, the procedural impropriety in the hearing and its attempts at covering up this travesty for shielding certain individuals. We are not rallying against or trying to stifle the larger issue of sexual violence faced by women on this campus or anywhere else. We request you to not twist the narrative, given the gravity of the situation here.

Regards,

Yash Solanki

[Shivain Vaidialingam]

Hi,

In addition to what has been espoused on behalf of Digvijay, I believe all of us would like to know how he is doing. So, please, post updates about his health as well. 

Best, 

Shivain Vaidialingam 

Batch of 2013

[Vikramaditya]

I have been informed that he is out of danger now but still under observation. Please keep updating us on this front as well. 

Regards,

--

Vikramaditya

Advocate

[B.A., LL.B.(Hons.), National Law University, Delhi]
Mob:+91-9540550698

[Shivain Vaidialingam]

Thanks, Vikram. 

[Sushant Singh]

Current Updates: Digvijay is out of danger and he is in process of recuperation.

His father also reached the hospital this morning.

He is admitted in Aakash Hospital, Dwarka (Near DPS Dwarka). If anyone wishes to make a visit may go there. Visiting hours till 7PM.

Regards,

Sushant Inderjeet Singh

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[Nidhi Chikkerur]

Dear all,

We are relieved to hear that Digvijay is now out of danger. We hope for his swift and speedy recovery.

The below email is not to suggest that the grievances of the complainants, Digvijay, his family, his friends, or anybody else, are to be sidelined. They are not, because the experience of each individual is valid, and demands equal attention and concern. We realize that the politics on campus has led to a charged atmosphere, which leads to constant hostility, allowing no space for empathy. But these are situations that require a little more patience than we are showing at this point.

We are deeply concerned about the incidents reported to have taken place on campus tonight as well as the past few weeks. We are concerned about the complainants, the accused, and everyone else who has been involved or affected by this entire episode.

We recognise that some of you may believe that we, as alumni, have little locus to offer our comment on something that must be very emotionally and mentally exhausting for all of you. However, in light of the events that have transpired on campus, and particularly the utterly disrespectful behaviour adopted towards members of the ICC, we feel compelled to put forth our concerns.

We express our immense sadness and disappointment at the treatment being meted out to the members of the ICC, who are in the unenviable position of being statutorily bound to remain silent in the face of personal attacks against them, in a manner that appears to be devoid of any  intent of engaging in a dialogue.

Malice, complacency and negligence are being attributed to Mrinal Sir by way of posters and emails. Other members of the ICC have faced similar harassment, such as in the case of Harpreet Ma’am, Preeti Ma’am and Anupama Ma'am. While we believe in the value of democratic protest, the threat of physical violence to professors, their families, and others, is not and cannot be a valid form of protest. A complete breakdown of atmosphere where ideas cannot be exchanged without threat of physical violence is anathema to a university. There is no point in directing collective anger at professors or their families. Their statutorily mandated silence cannot be a reason for us to threaten or create a hostile environment for them.

To those of us who do not want a breakdown in communication channels, we urge you to stand up for your teachers against such behaviour by your peers.

This email is an appeal to the present student body to please accord the same respect to Mrinal Sir, Harpreet Ma’am, Anupama Ma’am and Preeti Ma’am as well as other professors and members of the ICC, as they have always accorded to us.

With empathy,

Ever yours

Aditya Prakash (2015)

Gale Andrew (2018)

Hemangini Kalra (2015)

Keerthana Medarametla (2015)

Kopal Garg (2014)

Maulshree Pathak (2015)

Mini Saxena (2015)

Nidhi Chikkerur (2015)

Pawani Mathur (2017)

Pragya Mishra (2015)

Rishika Sahgal (2015)

Rupam Sharma (2015)

Saral Minocha (2017)

Shivangi Tewari (2015)

Shweta Kabra (2017)

Sonal Sarda (2017)

Subhro Prokas Mukherjee (2015)

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