Kolkata prof from St Xavier's Univ forced to quit over Instagram swimsuit pix

A woman assistant professor from St Xavier’s University in Kolkata was reportedly forced to resign after the father of an undergraduate student complained to the university that he was appalled to find his son looking at her “objectionable”, sexually explicit pictures posted on her Instagram account. The college said that her inappropriate pictures had “besmirched the reputation of the university”.

The entire incident has come to light because the professor sent a legal notice to the University in March 2022 questioning her summary dismissal in October last year. She had already filed a police complaint against the way she was treated by the University authorities. In her complaint, the professor has alleged that a “kangaroo court” was held at the university’s V-C’s office, where she was “intimidated, bullied and taunted with sexually coloured remarks” and “objectionable insinuations” without any provocation or justification.

After the incident was published in several newspapers, there was intense debate on social media about invasion of the professor’s privacy. The pictures she had posted on her Instagram profile was private and had been posted before she had joined the University. And, instead of questioning the alleged hacking of her account and how a woman’s private photo from a locked profile ended up with an undergraduate, she was being punished, said the professor in her police complaint.

“There were two pictures of me in a blue swimsuit taken in my room, which I had posted as an Instagram story last year, several months before joining the university. The only way in which such Instagram Stories can be accessed by other parties is by hacking or if someone had taken screenshots of the pictures when they had been posted and subsequently circulated them…” she said in her police complaint.

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“It is a mystery to me how the university accessed those pictures. I felt so distressed and humiliated at that moment that I couldn’t bear to examine the rest of the pictures. I was in a meeting where my private pictures were being circulated among people unknown to me, without my consent…”, she said.

A father is appalled

In his complaint to the university, which led to the teacher’s dismissal, a student’s father had said, “Recently, I was appalled to find my son looking at some pictures of professor…where she has posed in a sexually explicit way causing deliberate public exposure.”

“To look at a teacher dressed in her undergarments uploading pictures on social media is utterly shameful for me as a parent, since I have tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body…It is obscene, vulgar and improper for a 18-year-old student to see his professor dressed in scanty clothes exhibiting her body on a public platform,” the student’s father had written in the complaint to St Xavier’s University.

Even as the professor has decided to file a petition in Calcutta high court, the St Xavier’s University has sought an unconditional apology from her and compensation of ₹99 crore for causing immense and irreparable damage to the university’s good name, fame and goodwill.