Published 06:20 IST, October 19th 2019
#MeToo: Kolkata theatre professor accused of sexual abuse
Popular theatre personality & professor Sudipto Chatterjee has been accused of sexual harassment by a third-year student, to be produced before court on Oct 19
Bengali theatre personality and professor Sudipto Chatterjee has been accused of sexual harassment and was arrested on Friday. The complaint was lodged by a third-year student at a privately-run Heritage college in Kolkata. The complainant alleged that Chatterjee sexually abused her at his home in March 2019. Chatterjee was later arrested by the police when the other two women registered rape complaints in two different police stations, accusing him of raping them on the pretext of teaching acting techniques. Chatterjee will be produced before the court on Saturday.
Chatterjee, who holds a Ph.D. from a New York-based university is a known theatre personality who had been running a theatre group, Spectator. He was also a professor of media studies at a Kolkata based private college. He resigned from the college on Tuesday, a day after one of his students, took to social media to describe her ordeal. On Thursday, students protested on the college campus to demand justice for the woman.
'Serial offender'
She alleged that Chatterjee was a serial offender and filed a police complaint along with another survivor. "I filed an official complaint with the institution against this rapist on Monday, October 14. I was called for a meeting at the college on Wednesday, October 16 and during the same meeting the authority had informed me that Sudipto Chatterjee had ‘apparently‘ submitted his resignation on Tuesday, October 15," she wrote on Facebook.
After the first woman came out with her story, two other women also accused Sudipto of harassing them in heartbreaking Facebook posts. One of the women, who called out Sudipto of assaulting her in a Facebook post, accused him of digital rape.
According to reports, Chatterjee was called by the college's human resources department after the student complained and was told that the college had zero tolerance for sexual abuse. The college also reconstituted its internal complaints committee on Thursday as the earlier committee did not have a student representative as required by UGC guidelines.
Updated 07:10 IST, October 19th 2019