In a Facebook post, scholar Pushpika Sapna revealed how she was sexually and mentally harassed by the Left leaders in the JNU when she was a research scholar in the university.
In a Facebook post on Thursday (December 2), former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) scholar Pushpika Sapna has accused the Left student leaders of the JNU of sexually and mentally harassing her.
Associated with the Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF), she was an elected councillor in 2016-17. Naming Bibek Kumar, she has said he was a serial offender, and the university leadership of the DSF knew about it.
“I want to talk about BIBEK KUMAR more because he was a central panel candidate from DSF in LPF during the year 2015. He was a serial offender about which I did not know at that time but the senior leadership of that time knew. Why was he not exposed by the senior leadership of that time and more importantly why was he nominated for the central panel candidature” she has written in the viral post.
Bibek Kumar was named in the #MeToo movement, too, but the DSF did not dissociate itself from him.
She accused the Left organisations of marginalising the marginalised. She wrote, “This structure of informally slandering women by left political organisations need to stop…this structure of informally protecting offenders of sexual harassment, abuse, violence etc. by left organisations need to stop…this structure of casual sexism, patriarchy and misogyny within left needs to stop.”
Sapna was also silenced when she demanded justice for other victims associated with the Leftist students’ organisations in the JNU.
She wrote, “It needs to be stated that the marginalised communities are feeling marginalised within the left politics. It needs to be rectified. Women don’t come out in public about their experiences and injustices due to the fear of backlash and those who do, have to go through slandering and character assassination.”
Backing Sapna’s allegations, Shubhanshu Kumar, student activist of DSFin the university, said that the Left organisations in the university routinely overlook the misdeeds of their members.
He wrote, “I understood now that there were many things in the organisation which were not that transparent, that i believed so. Aise cases daba diye jaate hain taaki organisation ki saakh par batta na lage. On the contrary, a left-ambedkarite progressive organisation should own up and recognise the gender-insensitive and mental health- insensitive behaviour, language and character of its members. The organisation should own up to its mistakes and rectify.”
