The digital silence of a sweltering Delhi night broke with the sudden vibration of a smartphone. It was the first week of May 2026, and the corridors of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were suffocating under the dual pressures of the impending monsoon and the high-stakes viva voce examinations. Inside a closed, students-only WhatsApp group, a solitary message appeared, halting the mundane chatter of academic life.

The sender recounted an encounter that transformed a routine academic evaluation into a transactional nightmare. During a viva voce at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, the student alleged she had been subjected to sexually suggestive comments, followed by an explicit offer: higher academic marks in exchange for sexual favors.

In the labyrinthine power structures of academia, the evaluator holds absolute dominion. A professor’s pen can dictate a student's examination results, dictate their progression, and permanently alter their institutional standing. When that power is allegedly leveraged for sexual gratification, it ceases to be a mere breach of professional etiquette; it becomes a systemic violation. The solitary WhatsApp message acted as a spark in a powder keg. Emboldened by the first account, a cascade of voices emerged from the digital shadows. Several senior female students stepped forward, recounting their own experiences with the same faculty member.

The pattern they described was relentless and chilling. The allegations extended far beyond the confines of the examination room. Students reported being repeatedly summoned to meetings and informal gatherings at the professor's on-campus residence, where inappropriate sexual advances were allegedly made. Others cited sexually colored, lewd remarks delivered openly during classroom interactions, weaponizing the academic environment into a hostile space. By the end of the month, the whispers had materialized into formal, written complaints submitted to the university’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC). Eleven women students had placed their academic futures, personal safety, and psychological well-being on the line.

The accused was no obscure lecturer. The complaints named Professor Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, a 59-year-old faculty member with 16 years of experience at JNU. An academic heavyweight, his research focused on social and political psychology, identity politics, and conflict, earning him accolades such as the Young Psychologist Award from the National Academy of Psychology. But Akoijam’s profile had recently transcended the red-brick facades of the university, catapulting him into the highest echelons of national power.

Months prior to the May viva examinations, Akoijam had transitioned from a seasoned public intellectual into a formidable political titan. Running on an Indian National Congress (INC) ticket in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he had secured a massive mandate in the Inner Manipur constituency. The election had taken place against the harrowing backdrop of ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, a conflict that had claimed hundreds of lives and displaced tens of thousands. Capitalizing on deep-seated public frustration over the state and central government's handling of the crisis, Akoijam defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate, state Education Minister Thounaojam Basanta Kumar Singh, by a staggering margin of 1,09,801 votes.

Overnight, Akoijam became a sitting Member of Parliament and one of the Congress party's principal voices on the Manipur crisis in the Lok Sabha, boasting an 81% parliamentary attendance record.

The eleven complainants were no longer just facing a senior professor grading their papers; they were facing a national political figure backed by the machinery of India’s principal opposition party. The stakes elevated instantly from a campus dispute to a high-wire institutional crisis.

The Buildup

To comprehend the dread that paralyzes a campus when eleven women file complaints against a politically connected professor, one must dissect the very architecture of the institution designed to protect them. The Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of JNU is governed by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013—commonly known as the POSH Act—and the subsequent University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations of 2015.

The legal framework was meticulously designed with strict, unforgiving timelines to prevent institutional foot-dragging. Under POSH guidelines, a complaint must be filed within three months of the incident. Once received, the ICC is legally mandated to complete its inquiry within exactly 90 days. Following the completion of the inquiry, the committee has a mere 10 days to submit its final report to the employer. The law also grants the ICC the power to order interim relief during the pendency of the inquiry—such as transferring the complainant or the respondent, granting leave, or restraining the respondent from evaluating the complainant’s academic work.

For the eleven women who filed their complaints in May 2026, the statutory clock began ticking immediately. A resolution, or at least a formal inquiry report, was legally required by August. The ICC had reportedly taken cognizance of their complaints and begun proceedings, summoning complainants to record statements and gathering information from alumni to investigate potential historical patterns of misconduct.

But JNU’s ICC carries a controversial, highly politicized legacy that deeply colors every investigation it undertakes. The current committee was born out of a bitter administrative coup that dismantled its predecessor, the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH). Established in 1999 following the Supreme Court's landmark Vishaka guidelines, GSCASH was a fiercely democratic, elected body comprising representatives from all campus constituencies. It was widely trusted by the student body precisely because its members were elected, autonomous, and historically unafraid to rule against powerful figures.

In September 2017, the JNU administration abruptly disbanded GSCASH, locked and sealed its offices, and replaced it with the ICC under the auspices of complying with the UGC 2015 regulations. The critical difference was structural: unlike the elected GSCASH, the ICC is largely a nominated body, constituted by the university's top administration. This transition sparked massive protests, legal battles reaching the Delhi High Court, and a deep, lingering mistrust among the student body. Critics and former GSCASH members argued that a committee nominated by the highest authorities could easily be pressured to protect powerful figures, shielding the institution from scandal rather than shielding victims from harassment.

This structural anxiety became the central psychological battleground for the eleven complainants. As the intense Delhi heat gave way to the monsoon rains of July, and then the suffocating humidity of August, the 90-day statutory deadline expired. The silence from the administration grew deafening.

The threat of professional retaliation—a ruined thesis, a blocked publication, a failed viva—is omnipresent in higher education. When the accused is also a sitting Member of Parliament whose political star is rapidly rising, the gravity of that threat multiplies exponentially. As a parliamentarian, Akoijam had positioned himself as a fierce defender of human rights in Manipur, leading demands on the floor of the Lok Sabha and challenging the government's narratives. He was the face of the Congress party's moral high ground in the Northeast. Yet, inside the closed doors of the ICC, he was the respondent in a case involving eleven women accusing him of exploiting his academic dominance.

The 90-day delay transformed the inquiry into a bureaucratic black hole. The university administration offered no public explanation for the stalled timeline, allowing rumors and political weaponization to fill the void.

The Human Cost

By September 2026, the statutory deadline mandated by the POSH Act had officially expired. The inquiry had vanished into an administrative limbo, leaving the complainants trapped in an agonizing psychological endurance test.

The reality of pending sexual harassment inquiries is measured in the physical and mental toll exacted on the victims. It is the hyper-vigilance of walking across the campus, scanning the pathways of the School of Social Sciences to avoid a sudden encounter with the accused. It is the paranoia that every academic setback, every delayed email response from the faculty, and every administrative hurdle is a covert form of retaliation for speaking out. The institutional silence operated as a weapon of attrition. When the machinery of justice slows to a crawl, the burden shifts entirely onto the complainants, testing their resolve to see the process through against a powerful adversary.

The situation was aggravated by the stark contrast between the internal paralysis of the university and the external political noise. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), recognized the explosive nature of the delay and seized the moment.

On September 9, 2026, the simmering tension finally spilled onto the streets. ABVP members converged outside JNU’s School of Social Sciences, transforming the campus into a theater of political outrage. The smell of burning effigies drifted across the red-brick facades as protesters set fire to representations of both Professor Akoijam and the university's Internal Complaints Committee.

The ABVP’s contention was surgically precise and politically devastating. They demanded to know why complaints filed in May, involving a staggering eleven female students, remained unresolved four months later. ABVP JNU President Mayank Panchal addressed the crowds, weaponizing the delay to level a serious accusation against the administration: the inquiry was being intentionally stalled due to the political influence of the accused.

"JNU cannot have one standard for those outside the political establishment and another for those within it," Panchal stated, demanding accountability, a transparent inquiry, and appropriate action based on the findings. The ABVP alleged that the ICC was shielding Akoijam precisely because he was a Congress parliamentarian, suggesting his political weight was warping the institutional process. ABVP JNU Student Affairs In-charge Manisha Dabla echoed this, stating, "No student should feel that their voice will be ignored because the person accused holds political influence".

The protests were not solely directed at the administration; they were aimed squarely at the silence of opposing political factions. The controversy morphed into a brutal stress test for the ideological alignments on campus. The ABVP openly questioned the conspicuous silence of the Congress party, its student wing the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), and the various Left student organizations that typically position themselves at the vanguard of women's rights and campus safety. ABVP JNU minister Pravin Kumar Piyush explicitly criticized the representatives of left-wing student organizations who sat on the ICC, demanding their resignations for failing to ensure timely action despite their public advocacy for women's rights.

The optics were impossible to ignore. Organizations that routinely launched massive agitations over gender justice were suddenly quiet when the accused was a prominent figure within their own broader political ecosystem. The narrative rapidly shifted from a question of individual misconduct to a devastating critique of ideological hypocrisy. The Congress party’s national "Smash Patriarchy" rhetoric was openly mocked and tested against their silence regarding their own sitting MP.

The institutional credibility crisis had fully metastasized. Women’s safety was being treated as a principle that applied only when the accused belonged to a rival camp, vanishing into administrative complexity when the accused was politically inconvenient to condemn. Through it all, the eleven women who had triggered the inquiry remained trapped in the crossfire, their trauma overshadowed by the political point-scoring happening just outside their classroom windows.

The Reckoning

As the protests raged outside the School of Social Sciences, the JNU administration retreated behind closed doors, shielding the ICC process from public scrutiny. The central defense mechanism of any bureaucracy under fire is to point toward procedural complexity, and in the realm of sexual harassment law, time is often the most malleable variable.

While the POSH Act strictly outlines a 90-day timeframe for the completion of an inquiry, the legal reality of enforcing that deadline provides a massive loophole for institutional lethargy. In January 2023, the Delhi High Court delivered a critical ruling in a separate POSH-related case (W.P.(C) 88/2023, CA Nitesh Parashar v. ICAI) presided over by Justice Vikas Mahajan. The court ruled that a sexual harassment complaint and its subsequent inquiry proceedings cannot be quashed merely because the Internal Complaints Committee fails to complete the inquiry within the statutory 90-day time frame dictated by Section 11(4) of the Act.

Justice Mahajan emphasized that complaints of sexual harassment require a certain magnitude of seriousness and responsibility, and they must be taken to their "logical conclusion" in the interest of both the complainant and the accused. The ruling established that the time limit provided under the provision cannot be viewed as a mandatory terminal point beyond which an inquiry loses its validity, particularly if no explicit prejudice caused by the delay can be proven.

This legal precedent provided the ultimate administrative cover for JNU’s ICC. The 120-day delay in the Akoijam case, while a blatant violation of the spirit of the UGC regulations, did not legally vitiate the proceedings. The administration could drag its feet without risking the legal collapse of the inquiry.

However, legal survival does not equate to moral or institutional integrity. The fundamental failure of the JNU administration was not just a matter of missed deadlines; it was a failure to demonstrate transparency and protect the complainants from the crushing weight of systemic inertia. If an ordinary, politically unconnected professor faced allegations from eleven different students, the university would likely not permit the matter to drift unresolved for a third of a year.

The identity and political standing of Angomcha Bimol Akoijam irrevocably altered the urgency with which the complaint was handled. The dual trial of the accused—one occurring inside the sealed rooms of the ICC, the other raging in the court of public opinion and campus politics—highlighted the inherent fragility of nominated institutional bodies. When a committee appointed by the Vice-Chancellor is tasked with investigating a sitting Member of Parliament whose political influence extends to the highest legislative body in the country, the power imbalance is insurmountable.

The silence of the accused, the silence of the Congress party leadership, and the silence of the Left student unions created a vacuum filled entirely by the ABVP’s fiery rhetoric. The controversy laid bare the grim reality of how academic institutions process trauma: harassment is frequently treated not as a profound crisis of justice, but as a reputational risk to be managed, delayed, and ultimately buried under procedure.

If the allegations against Professor Akoijam were false, orchestrated as part of a malicious political hit job to derail a rising opposition star, then the four-month delay robbed him of his right to a swift exoneration and a clear name. The stalling damaged his reputation as profoundly as it damaged the complainants' pursuit of justice. But if the allegations were substantiated—if academic marks were truly weaponized to extract sexual favors—then every day the administration delayed was a day that the perpetrators of institutional violence were protected by the very system designed to root them out.

The shadows stretching across the red-brick pathways of JNU hide more than just political secrets. They hide the eleven women who believed that coming forward together would protect them, only to discover that when political gravity meets institutional machinery, the first casualty is always time, and the second is the truth.

The reckoning for Jawaharlal Nehru University is no longer just about one professor or one committee. It is about whether the architecture of the modern Indian university is fundamentally incapable of policing its own titans. The 90-day clock has long since run out, but the final verdict on the institution itself is already being written in the smoke of burning effigies.