South Asian University (SAU) is in the news yet again. And as often is the case with this university, it is for the wrong reasons. This time it has garnered attention for the sexual assault on a first year B Tech student by – as informed by students – four men including two other B Tech students, one staff member and one guard. While this is the culmination of the path the SAU has been institutionally paving for itself and legitimising for quite some time, the attempts at handling the fallout from the incident are shockingly pathetic, but true to SAU’s established track record.

The incident and established track record

The assault occurred on October 12 night within the university premises, and the victim has since been taken to hospital and an FIR has been filed. She is still in a state of shock and under the care of students, former students and her relatives. Much of this has been widely reported in the Indian press. 

According to the FIR, this was not just a random assault, but a coordinated attack preceded by stalking via email and WhatsApp. What is even more important and not discussed is, how this was possible within the university itself and what its broader implications are. After all, this is legally not just any university but an entity that is supposed to be co-owned by the nations of South Asia. How safe is it for women in particular as well as South Asian citizens, in general?

On February 26, 2025, Yashada Sawant, then, a sociology MA student from Maharashtra was publicly assaulted by Ratan Singh and a gang of goons with clear affiliations to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Since then, Sawant has been slapped a fine. Sudeepto Niloy, a Bangladeshi national who attempted to help her during the incident has been expelled from the university and was forced to leave the country while the culprits celebrated victory. All this happened despite the availability of convincing video evidence. This outcome was only possible and was widely expected as a necessary result of SAU’s extremely partisan inquiry processes in place. The same institutionalised biases were evident in all the fabricated charges levelled against four colleagues who were initially expelled on June 16, 2023 and all other SAU enquiries that have captured some public attention over the last four years. 

What does all this mean? Particularly when the case involving Sawant is taken into account, the message is clear: whatever the evidence, if the culprits are connected to the administration or to powerful pan-Indian entities like ABVP, they will face no consequences. This clarity is augmented by the fact that victimised students, faculty or staff cannot appeal to the judiciary given the wrongfully granted immunity that protects SAU from prosecution and all SAARC nations including India, which co-funds SAU do not offer any kind of formal or informal assistance to victims. That is, with the protection of immunity, it has become a criminal fiefdom completely out of reach of Indian law and untouched by the legal systems of the other South Asian countries.

Also read: Student Alleges Attempted Gang-Rape at South Asian University; Campus Protests Demand Action

The university is a dystopic place where once a person enters, you are completely at the mercy of the administration headed by a few science faculty members such as the proctor, dean of students and a vice-president from Mathematics. And except one vice-president, no one else is non-Indian. This is how ‘South Asian’ the South Asian University is. The present illegalities and violence against women and the marginalisation of non-Indians have become normative under these conditions in the context of which even faculty members’ complaints go unheeded.

This situation is a well-known fact which gives confidence to culprits and discourages victims from seeking justice. The current assault case is a natural outcome of this extremely corrupt but tolerated system, which has always ignored complaints by women students even though there are numerous examples in social media. 

Aftermath

Students have occupied the administration building twice since the incident demanding the resignation of the dean of students and hostel officials – warden and caretaker. The dean of students has been in the forefront of numerous anti-student welfare actions for quite some time including the incident concerning Sawant. 

From the beginning of the recent assault, the university’s attempt has been to delegitimise the incident and the victim, and ensure that it disappears from public consciousness while further victimising the victim in accordance with its established track record. In reality and as evident from past instances, the university compels victims of violence to coexist with the perpetrators. It is an intriguing yet shocking model of higher education in the region. 

According to the assaulted student's statement to the police, she has alleged that hostel staff discouraged her from calling the police or informing her own family. In fact, the university never called the police, and it was done by fellow students. She mentioned, “The warden said to change my clothes and have a bath, everything will be fine. They said they will call the PRO and handle it internally.” For the university, it was not a distressful emotional and physical assault on one of its own first year students, but a public relations hassle that needed to be dealt with internally. 

Further, she noted in her FIR that when she attempted to make a video call to her parents, hostel staff and a guard “physically covered the phone and stopped her from speaking”. The hostel’s caretaker allegedly under the instructions of the warden and dean of students has sent a text on WhatsApp to the student’s guardian claiming, “I would like to inform you that your daughter has had a panic attack and is trying to hurt herself. The campus medical doctor has advised that she be taken to the hospital. We have already informed and called her local guardian.” 

This is typical of blaming the victim and making the initial groundwork for the protection of culprits as has been the case before. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the names of the culprits are not in the FIR even though they have been identified in public discussions – three students from the B Tech programme and a guard. The silence regarding identifying the culprits, according to students, is due to their political affiliations as was the case with Sawant.

The university has issued an utterly unconvincing and hollow statement on October 14 on X saying, "We the SAU community, faculty, staff and students stand in solidarity in light of the alleged horrific act of sexual violence that has been reported on campus. The South Asian University condemns this alleged act of sexual violence in the strongest terms and in one voice… SAU has a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment and all forms of violence against women…”

When taken in the context of its past track record, its compromised inquiry procedures, the implication of the faculty and administration in these activities and the abject silence of its card-carrying critical feminists, the centre's statement not only sounds hollow but woefully fake. 

SAU has also appointed an inquiry committee under the chairmanship of Sanjay Chaturvedi, one of the vice-presidents. But speaking from experience and based on the university’s track record, Chaturvedi is usually appointed or involved in a committee when a conclusion to an inquiry is predetermined. He was instrumental in ensuring a farcical fact-finding committee of suspended faculty members and spearheaded a campaign against the author when his PhD student had quoted the American scholar Noam Chomsky in a dissertation proposal that had been fully approved by all the statutory bodies within the system ensuring the ouster of both and again with no justice. 

Knowing this well, students had requested the inclusion of student representatives in the inquiry committee to which SAU’s all weather legal luminary Ravindra Pratap has said, this is not possible as University rules and SAARC norms do not allow this. This, however, is a falsehood as student presentation has been evident in earlier committees and neither SAARC nor SAU rules suggest such a prohibition. Again, it is clear where the present inquiry would go too. 

However, to its credit, the National Commission for Women has taken suo motu cognisance of the alleged sexual assault and has instructed the police to conduct an immediate, impartial, and sensitive investigation into the case and has requested that that the protection of the survivor is ensured while demanding strict action against the accused.

The future

What is the future of SAU? I have written earlier that SAU is a failed experiment that has now become a toxic space particularly for foreign students and women. All this is evident in what has happened in the university over the last four years and particularly pronounced since it has been taken over by K.K. Agarwal, the choice of the Indian government. It seems Agarwal and his companions are not only dismantling the university’s South Asian credentials and academic excellence but also making it a public embarrassment for the Indian government given it is located in the national capital, funded mostly by India now.

But to be clear, the downward trend of SAU is not authored by the government. Instead, it is authored and implemented by visionless people within the university led by Agarwal and his coterie but ably protected by the right of immunity from prosecution that SAU had been granted at the inception based on the assumption it is a SAARC entity. But now it is in practice an Indian entity, based in India and benefiting mostly Indian students, faculty and staff. Even if it is considered legally an international university, there is no reason to offer it continued protection from prosecution. 

Given this, should it not be subject to Indian laws in which case these kind of malpractices and illegalities could have been dealt under the law of the land as all other institutions and individuals? But now, what has effectively happened is the emergence of a sovereign fiefdom within India’s national capital untouched by India’s laws and its judiciary. And the majority of its victims as in the case of the present assault case and Sawant’s ordeal earlier, are Indian citizens who simply cannot expect justice from within and from the judicial system in their own country. More than anything else, this is both an embarrassment and a blemish upon the rule of law and India’s democracy. At the very least, the Indian government should rescind the immunity granted to SAU and bring it under the same legal status as all other universities and institutions in the country. Then, at least in theory, victims would have some hope of justice. 

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