Bengaluru police have filed a case against Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), along with the Dean, and six other faculty members, against allegations of caste-based discrimination.
This information was independently verified by EdexLive.
An official from Bengaluru’s Mico Layout police station, said, “A case has been filed against the Director, Dean, and other faculty members under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Ordinance, 2014. We are investigating the matter.”
This development comes after a report submitted to the principal secretary of the Social Welfare Department of Karnataka on November 26 by the Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement (DCRE), highlighted caste atrocities committed by IIMB’s leadership.
Following this, on December 9, the Social Welfare Department instructed the Bengaluru Police Commissioner to register a First Information Report (FIR) against the accused faculty members.
What happened?
The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Professor Gopal Das, an Associate Professor of Marketing at IIMB.
Prof Das, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur graduate, joined IIMB in 2018. It is reported that although Prof Das belongs to the Dalit community, he never sought reservation benefits and applied for the associate professor role based on his qualifications and merit alone.
However, the DCRE’s report mentions that the IIMB Director and Dean publicised Professor Das’ caste identity through mass emails, which contributed to creating a discriminatory and hostile work environment.
As per a report by Mooknayak, this is reportedly the first time since the establishment of IIMs in India that a serving director has been accused of caste-based discrimination and named in an FIR for committing atrocities against a faculty member.
The Mooknayak report mentions that along with the director, a case has been registered against seven professors — Professors Dr Dinesh Kumar, Dr Sainesh G, Dr Srinivas Prakhya, Dr Chetan Subramanian, Dr Ashish Mishra, Dr Srilatha Jonnalagedda and Dr Rahul De.
The DCRE report also noted that IIMB failed to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe members, as mandated by law.
