In the backdrop of the IIT Madras smear campaign against the media, particularly the New Indian Express and its photographer Albin Mathew — through the Internet — and the City Police filing a case under the women’s harassment Act against him des-pite knowing that the IIT complaint was contrary to the evidence
it had in its possession, we are publishing all the pictures that Math- ew took on the campus on August 21. They speak for themselves.
On that day, when Mathew was on the IIT campus on assignment, he exposed 21 frames within a span of over 19 minutes.None of them are offensive and can be said to violate the ‘privacy of women’ or lower their dignity. Apart from the handing over the memory card of the camera to the Kotturpuram police, the photographer had shown the entire set of pictures he had shot that day on the campus to IIT-M Dean of Students, L S Ganesh, when he was held captive inside the administrative building.
After examining the pictures in detail, Ganesh had even apologised to Mathew for the shocking episode, in which fellow professor Prakash M Maiya, along with private security guards, punched the photographer on the face. As Mathew went straight to the police station, after he was freed following police intervention from the IIT administrative building, and filed a complaint, Ganesh tried to negotiate with journalists the next day at the police station.
When the journalists dug in their heels, insisting on the immediate arrest of Maiya, Ganesh openly threatened the journalists, saying he would make three girls file a complaint against Mathew under the women’s harassment Act. Though that happened in the presence of the police officers of the station and the Joint Commissioner,
S N Seshasai, the next day the police accepted the compliant. How they took cognizance of the complaint when they had clear evidence that it was not the truth is inexplicable, to say the least.
Apart from that, IIT Director Bhaskar Ramamurthy and five women students of IIT had been claiming, in e-mails to newspapers, that the photographer took close-up shots of grieving students. One look at the complete set of pictures will help you decide if there is even a grain of truth in their claim. Yet, to protect Maiya, the IIT has embarked on a campaign of calumny through e-mails and posts in the web claiming that the media has violated Press Council norms.
The IIT has also failed to keep the assurance its two reprsentatives, Registrar N Siva Prasad and dean of academic courses K Ramamurthy, gave to media persons at the City Police Commissioner’s office on Saturday that they would summarily withdraw the complaint. Maiya’s apology is yet to reach media houses and the false case has not been withdrawn.
How low can a premier institute like IIT Madras stoop under the able guidance of its director Bhaskar Ramamurthy? Will Union Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal please take note?
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