Protest against arrest of assistant professor

AMERICAN COLLEGE FACULTY MEMBERS LAY SIEGE TO POLICE STATION

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE, MADURAI MARCH 9, published 10-0302011.

TENSION prevailed at the Tallakulam police station here as the agitating faculty members of the American College laid siege to it, after police took one of their colleagues into custody on Wednesday.

Vijayan, Assistant Professor of Botany and Director of Computer Information System (CIS), was taken into custody by police following the Bishop men running the college filed a complaint with police that the hard-disk containing inportant data of students was missing.

Defending Vijayan, the rest of the faculty of the college held siege to the police station.

According to K.Anbunathan, Dean (Self-Financing Courses) and Director of Management Studies, Vijayan was managing the CIS which stores all the crucial data of the students. When the problem broke out between the Bishop and the faculty, we sealed the office and refrained from providing the password, fearing any malpractice. It was said that Bishop men in-charge of the college lured the old and poor performing students to their side assuring them to provide pass marks in their examinations (Bishop men are capable of this, in 2008, when bishop men took over the college they had given pass marks to students in all the papers in which they appeared for exams some of them even had more than 10 arrear papers! There are many students who cleared arrears in more than 5 - 10 papers in a single sitting!) . Since they were not able to tamper the system without the password, they started targetting Vijayan, Anbunathan charged.

Further the problem was getting intensified with students (who are staying out of the college fearing rowdies and hooligans inside the college) taking up the issue in their hands and organising various demonstrations. They try to please students (and threat students who are not attending classes under the leadership of Bishop men) by publishing the results for which they need the data, he opined.

After they have filed the complaint, the police took custody of Vijayan from his house (in the wee hours of Wednesday, giving a tense moment to his children, spouse and neighbours) at Nagamalai and treated him like a criminal which was embarrassing for the professor. The faculty after learning the news rushed to the police station and P. R. Anbudurai, Principal-in-Charge elected by the Governing Council defended Vijayan. The faculty accused the present principal (Mr. Mohan, the illegal principal who broke open the college offices and illegally took over the college) and is men for breaking open the sealed offices and trying to tamper the information system. Both the parties were called to the police station and they were eager to take down the password. However, we refused that the information can only be shared with the high level committee (appointed by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister) and they have to wait till the visit of the committee.

After giving a written statement at the station, we returned (after 5 hours!) to the college and staged a demonstration condemning such kind of activities to blemish the image of our faculty, Anbunathan said.

According to police sources, the present principal filed the complaint against Vijayan, charging that he has locked the database and they were not able to publish the semester results of old students without the password. Hence, they took custody of Vijayan for enquiry and he defended himself that he was not responsible. The same was conveyed to the complaintant and we advised both the parties to solve their problems through court action, they said. (The question still remains... why police men should show urgency in taking custody of Vijayan? that too in the early hours?.. and treating him like a criminal!)

*** Items in brackets are added by the blogger