IIM-B Director, faculty booked for alleged harassment of Dalit scholar

Bengaluru: The Bengaluru police have registered an FIR against Rishikesh T Krishnan, Di-rector of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), along with the Dean (Faculty) and six senior faculty members, over allegations of caste-based discrimination. The action follows an inquiry by the Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement (DCRE), which confirmed the allegations raised by Associate Pro-fessor Gopal Das, a globally recognised Dalit scholar.

The FIR, lodged at the Mico Layout Police Station on December 20, names sen-ior faculty members Dinesh Kumar, Sainesh G, Srinivas Praka, Chetan Subrama-nian, Ashish Mishra, Srilatha Jonalagedu, and Rahul De. They are charged under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Pre-vention of Atrocities) Act, 2015, which address caste-based insults and abuse.

The controversy began in January 2024 when Gopal Das wrote to President Droupadi Murmu during her visit to IIM-B. In his letter, he alleged exclusion from institutional activities, restricted access to resources, and caste-based humilia-tion. The President’s office directed the DCRE to investigate the matter, leading to an inquiry initiated in March.

In May, Das escalated his complaint to P Manivannan, Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Social Welfare Department, claiming intensified harassment after the DCRE’s involvement.

The DCRE’s investigation, led by Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Arun Chakravarthy, concluded in November and found substantial evidence of caste-based harassment. The report accused Director Rishikesh Krishnan of pub-licly disclosing Gopal Das’s caste in a mass email and found that Krishnan and Dean Dinesh Kumar denied Das equal opportunities in professional activities.

Additionally, the report criticised IIM-B for failing to comply with legal obliga-tions to establish mechanisms to address grievances of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) employees.

Based on the findings, the Karnataka Social Welfare Department directed the Bengaluru Commissioner on December 9 to take appropriate action against the accused under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.