The Kerala Police filed a case against a professor at the National Institute of Technology-Calicut for a social media comment praising MK Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.
The case has been registered against A Shaija, a professor of mechanical engineering. On Gandhi’s death anniversary on January 31, she wrote a Facebook comment that read: “Proud of Godse for saving India”. She made the statement in response to a post by a lawyer who wrote: “Hindu Mahasabha activist Nathuram Godse, a hero of many in Bharat.”
Shaija later deleted the comment, but screenshots of it were widely shared on social media.
The police in Kozhikode district filed a first information report against the professor based on a complaint by the Students’ Federation of India, The New Indian Express reported.
Kozhikode MP MK Raghavan on Saturday called for “appropriate exemplary action” against Shaija. “I am ashamed to hear an inappropriate comment against Mahatma Gandhi and praise of Godse’s deed by a person holding a responsible post in NIT, a premier institution [that] falls under my constituency,” he said.
Shailjal said that she did not intend to appreciate Gandhi’s killing through her comment. “I had read Godse’s book, Why I Killed Gandhi,” she told The Indian Express. “Godse was also a freedom fighter. There is a lot of information and revelations in his book which the common man does not know. Godse has enlightened us in his book. Against this backdrop, I had commented on the advocate’s Facebook post.”
The professor said she deleted her comment when she realised that people had “started distorting” it.
Last month, a controversy had erupted at the National Institute of Technology-Calicut when a group of students attempted to celebrate the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya by painting a saffron-coloured map of India. They were confronted by another group that displayed placards with the words “India is not Rama Rajya”, which led to an altercation on campus.
Earlier this week, the institute had suspended a student named Vysakh Premkumar for participating in the protest. However, the suspension was put on hold till an appellate authority decides on his appeal.
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