Sonepat: Panel wants Jindal university prof booked in dating app case

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Chandigarh, December 6

The Haryana State Commission for Women (HSCW) today called for the registration of an FIR against Prof Sameena Dalwai of OP Jindal Global University at Sonepat for allegedly breaching the privacy of students and harassing them on the basis of religion and ideology.

Dalwai, a law teacher, is accused of pressuring third year students to open a profile on dating app Bumble. When the students refused, she allegedly advised them to create fake IDs and even suggested using Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s picture. She allegedly made them open the app, following which the students accused her of breaching their privacy. The HSCW had directed the professor to appear before it today, but she skipped the hearing and instead sent her lawyer. Commission Chairperson Renu Bhatia rejected the application moved by the lawyer to allow Dalwai to appear through video-conference. This was the second time she skipped the hearing. In an email to the commission dated December 6, Dalwai said she had assumed the case had been closed as the university had sent an action-taken report. She said her request for video-conference meant “she was ready to appear before the commission in good faith”.

After being tagged on X (formerly Twitter) by the students, the HSCW Chairperson had visited the university on November 7 and recorded the interviews of 180 students. In a letter to the Sonepat Commissioner of Police today, the commission maintained that creating a fake account in the name of a known political personality such as Rahul Gandhi amounted to “cheating, dishonesty and impersonation”. “We have solid evidence, including video recordings of students testifying before the commission, to support our claims. The students have bravely come forward to share their experiences and expose this egregious act of misconduct by the professor,” it wrote.

Ordering the registration of an FIR, the HSCW said the “safety, security and dignity of the female students cannot be compromised with merely because she has chosen not to appear before the commission”.

Dalwai was issued a show cause notice by the university on November 8. In her reply, she had submitted that the module ‘Gender, Sexuality and Desire’ dealt with the intricate interplay of caste, class and various other social identities in “shaping and influencing our experiences of desire”, and “to gain a deeper understanding of these concepts, they had collectively created a Bumble account”. She had also said her email to a professor, Mansi Kumar, on the Israel-Palestine issue had “inadvertently caused hurt feelings among practising Hindus”. The university had issued her a warning letter on November 13.