Kolkata: Posing in a bikini cost a former assistant professor at St Xavier’s University here her job. She was allegedly asked to quit after a parent complained that he had noticed his son looking at photos of her in a bikini on Instagram.
The former assistant professor alleged that the university received a written complaint from a first-year male undergraduate student’s father last year and was asked to quit, according to media reports. St. Xavier’s, however, has refuted the allegations and claims the assistant professor resigned voluntarily.
In the letter, the parent said that he had caught his son looking at pictures of the university professor that were “objectionable”, “vulgar” and “bordered on nudity”. The allegedly drafted complaint letter by the father, named B.K. Mukherjee is circulating on social media.
“Recently, I was appalled to find my son looking at some pictures of Prof. where she has posed in a sexually explicit way causing deliberate public exposure. To look at a teacher dressed in her undergarments and uploading pictures on social media is utterly shameful for me as a parent since I have tried to shield my son from this kind of gross indecency and objectification of the female body. It is obscene, vulgar, and improper for an 18-year-old student to see his professor dressed in scanty clothes exhibiting her body on a public platform,” the complaint letter reads.
According to the professor, during a meeting with university authorities, she was shown the guardian’s complaint letter and a piece of paper with thumbnails of some photographs from her private Instagram account. Further, the professor was pressured to quit the university as she had “besmirched the reputation of the university,” News18 reported.
The professor claimed in a police report she filed on October 24, 2021, that her private Instagram account may have been hacked, leading to the disclosure and distribution of her images. She added that the university’s treatment of her dismissal constituted sexual harassment and intentional character assassination.
