Tidbits of the region’s media

The death of Professor S R Siras, a reader in the Department of Modern Indian Languages at Aligarh Muslim University, has not seen the end of the well-deserved negative attention that the university has received after its deplorable persecution of the senior scholar and poet. Despite the university coming out publically regarding Siras's suspension and eviction from his campus housing, allegedly on the basis of a tape of his sexual relationship with a rickshaw puller while in his 20s, the story remains shrouded in mystery. In fact, no sex tape has materialised, something that AMU officials were forced to admit in court, thus implying that they had dismissed Siras without evidence of an action that is, let's be clear, not criminal to begin with.

What has emerged is that three journalists from the  Voice of Nation had broken into Siras's house, in all likelihood working with highly-placed officials in the university. Soon after, Siras was ejected from his campus home and job, and outed in the press. Thereafter, the police repeatedly refused to file an FIR until ordered to do so by the High Court, and the elderly man was even denied health care after local newspapers ran the story.