Bengaluru, Aug 20: Four female PhD students from Kerala have filed police complaints against the coordinator of CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute (CSIR-4PI) in the city, accusing him of sexually harassing them.
The Marathahalli police registered four FIRs under section (354A) of the IPC against 49-year-old principal scientist Imtiyaz Ahmed Parvez on Friday. Police questioned him and took his statement before releasing him on bail the same day.
Other faculty members were also questioned and their statements were taken, police sources said. The institute is located on NAL Belur Campus, Wind Tunnel Road, east Bengaluru.
The women, aged between 27 and 31, had approached V S Ugrappa, the chairman of the Expert Committee on Prevention of Sexual Violence against Women and Children, on August 18, which happened to be Parvez’s 49th birthday.
The women have been pursuing PhD in environmental science, earthquake and other natural calamities, and physics for the past three years. Parvez was their coordinator. They alleged that he had been “sexually harassing” them for the past one year.
In one instance, a student was not given marks cards of a few exams as she spurned his “sexual advances”. The women alleged that he would call them individually into his chamber, “stare at them and try to touch them inappropriately”.
The women said that since Parvez heads the institute, he has wide contacts in other research institutes across the country. They feared that even if they complete the PhD, securing a position in any research institute will become difficult for them.
The women also wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office since the institute comes under the Union ministry of science and technology. But neither did the PMO respond nor did the government take any action.
They then approached the former chief secretary of Karnataka, J Alexander, as the family of one of them, knows him.
Alexander called up Ugrappa and apprised him of the matter. Ugrappa informed the Bengaluru Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar who, in turn, ordered the jurisdictional DCP (Whitefield) Abdul Ahad to look into the complaints.
Police sources said CSIR-4PI did not form an internal complaints committee as per the Vishakha guidelines that stipulate that half of the members should be women and at least one member should be an outsider. Parvez himself formed the committee and concluded that the women’s complaints were “false, fabricated and baseless,” the sources said.
When DH contacted Parvez, he refused to comment, saying he is a Central government employee and is barred from speaking to the media.
A source in CSIR-4PI, however, said that a committee was formed under one Dr Mudgal and it found that the women’s allegations were “false”.