Two male students at Savitribai Phule Pune University have been suspended and a first information report referred to police after an incident on Sunday night in which they reportedly objected to a postgraduate student's presence outside the girls' hostel past 10.30pm. According to a complaint lodged with hostel security, the two men, upon receiving no response from the student, sought to have her parents notified through the hostel's security staff.
Demonstrations at the women's residential block continued through Sunday night in response to the episode. By Monday afternoon, university authorities had handed the two male students a suspension and referred the matter to police.
The episode brought into focus questions about whether hostel regulations at the university — an institution bearing the name of a woman who campaigned for girls' access to education — treated students equally. A number of students said that how administrators handled the matter did not meet the standard of fairness they had anticipated.
Ankita Bhui, an MA sociology student, told a television news outlet that the two male residents of the men's hostel had been travelling on a motorcycle. On two separate passes in front of the student and her companion, they circled back before pulling up and questioning why she had taken a seat outside. When her challenge to their jurisdiction went unacknowledged, the group moved to the girls' hostel entrance roughly 100 metres away and directed the security guard there to verify whether the student held a late pass, with instructions to contact her parents if none was produced. Whether the two men held authorisation to be out at that hour was not examined.
Tanishka Bhandari, a public health student, told reporters that when hostel residents raised objections to the conduct of the two men, those in charge took no steps to direct the men back to their own accommodation or to establish why they remained outside at that hour. Students recounted that when they pressed for a formal complaint to be lodged and an apology from the male students, the rector told them to calm down rather than support their position, adding that compelling the men to apologise would damage their self-esteem. The hostel gate had been shut, leaving the men on the other side, where the confrontation continued. The reasoning behind that position was not made clear.
Swati Patil, an MA political science student, noted that the chief rector had not visited the women's hostel even after students maintained their demonstration through the night and into Monday morning. Nidhi Narang, also a student at SPPU, recounted that when a group of women arrived at Chatushringi police station in the early hours of Monday to lodge a complaint, the attitude of the officers on duty left them feeling unsupported, and without anyone in a position of authority present to stand by the complainant, she chose not to proceed with filing. Questions about what responsibility university leadership and the chief rector bore in that situation were raised in the aftermath of the incident.
"They should have filed the complaint," one of the students said.
A group of students gathered in the vice-chancellor's office, calling for accountability over the discrimination and complaints they had experienced, and urging him to pursue tangible measures against the male students and rectors implicated in the matter. Speaking to the students after deliberation, Vice-Chancellor Suresh Gosavi conveyed that the male students involved had been placed under suspension and that the university had begun the process of lodging an FIR.
Following the students' call for action against hostel staff, institutional leadership opted to replace the women's hostel warden and hand oversight of that post to Geeta Shinde, who heads the education department. In response to calls from the students for action against the chief rector, the vice-chancellor indicated that a high-level committee would be formed to look into the matter and assign accountability. During the meeting held in the VC's office, the chief rector submitted a resignation on ethical grounds.
Chatushringi police station's Senior Inspector Uttam Bhajnawale told a news channel that the woman had not come forward with a complaint, and that no representative from the university had made contact with the station by the afternoon. The student and university representatives both arrived afterward. An officer noted that her account was being documented and that the formal complaint registration procedure was under way as of Monday evening.
