New Delhi: Infosys co-founder Senapathy Kris Gopalakrishnan and 17 members of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have been booked under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, after a faculty member filed a police complaint accusing them of wrongly dismissing him from service.
Professor D. Sanna Durgappa, the faculty member who was formerly with Centre for Sustainable Technologies at the IISc, had approached the 71st city civil and session court in Bengaluru. The court directed the jurisdictional police to register a case and investigate the matter.
A case was registered under the SC/ST Act with the Sadashivanagar police on January 27.
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According to Durgappa’s complaint, he was dismissed from service in 2014 after being implicated in a fake honey trap case. He also claimed that the accused subjected him to casteist abuse, news agency PTI reported.
Durgappa belongs to the Bovi community (scheduled caste) of Karnataka.
Notably, Gopalakrishnan is a member of the IISc board of trustees. He also served as the CEO and managing director of Infosys from 2007 to 2011, and vice chairman till 2014.
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The others accused in the case include current and former IISc directors Govindan Rangarajan and Balaram P, registrar Sridhar Warrier, and faculty members Sandya Vishwswaraih, Hari K V S, Dasappa, Hemalata Mhishi, Chattopadyaya K, Pradeep D Sawkar and Manoharan, among others.
The case has already stirred a storm on social media. While some have called out the deep rooted casteism of organisational heads, others are calling it a case of abuse of the SC/ST Act.
The accused have not responded to the allegations.
