By Somya Panwar
Infosys co-founder Senapathy Kris Gopalakrishan, Balaram P, former Indian Instutitute of Science (IISc) director and 16 others were booked by Bengaluru police on Monday under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act after a former IISc faculty member filed a complaint.
As per directives of the 71st City Civil and Session Court (CCH) the case was filed at Sadashiva Nagar Police station. Sanna Durgappa, a member of the Bovi community and former assistant professor at IISc’s Centre for Sustainable Technology was the one with whom the complaint was lodged against the accused. He was falsely implicated in a honey trap case in 2014, leading to his dismissal from IISC, where Kris Gopalakrishan serves as a member of the Board of Trustees, durgappa claimed. He also mentioned about the alleged caste-based abuse and threats.
In the petition to the court, durgapppa alleged that he was accused of calling a married woman “beautiful”. Sexual Harassment Complaints Committee (SHCC) concluded that the term “beautiful” invited sexual harassment, and he was fired from the job after the woman filed a complaint.
Further, he argued that under Supreme Court guidelines, there has to be one NGO representative in the SHCC, but there was no such involvement of a member from that category in the board committee. He also requested Karnataka Legislative Assembly SC/ST Committee in August 2017 for an investigation. The investigation report which came a month later disclosed that there was no sexual harassment, but because of being a Dalit, Durgappa was singled out.
According to Durgappa, he was supposed to be reinstated at work. Durgappa met the directors of IISc on two occasions – May 19, 2017 and October 9, 2020 respectively during which he filed for review petition for reinstatement. After which he allegedly faced threats of police complaint. He also mentioned about the mistreatment by the administration over his caste, Later Durgappa then approached the court.
There was no immediate response from IISc or KrisGopalakrishnan to the police case.