Gujarat High Court Slams GNLU for “Suppressing” Rape, Homophobia

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) was pulled up by the Gujarat High Court for “suppressing” incidents of rape, molestation, discrimination and homophobia at its Gandhinagar campus, reported Live Law.

Last week, a fact-finding committee submitted a report to the High Court regarding the happenings on the GNLU campus. Terming the report “really scary”, a bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha Mayee said that the GNLU officials had deliberately concealed the incidents.

Gujarat High Court took suo motu cognisance of news reports that a woman in GNLU was raped, and a queer student was sexually harassed. The High Court formed a committee, headed by former judge Harsha Devani to probe into the allegations. ,

The report said a student suffered mental trauma after he was allegedly harassed for being a homosexual. Another student accused a batchmate of raping her.

Noting that the panel had indicated similar incidents on the campus, the Gujarat High Court said, “It was so difficult for the students of the GNLU to speak up, and they are students of Law. If the voices of law students are suppressed, who will speak in the country? They are supposed to help others.”

The university’s registrar filed an affidavit saying “nothing happened” and asked for the matter to be closed. “He had the audacity to say this before us when the court was seized with the matter,” the High Court said.

The court further said that the committee’s report contained allegations against some of the male members of the faculty. The court directed the Advocate General to inform it about the authority that would be taking action in the matter based on the report of the committee.