SBBU harassment case: Student rejects Talpur’s offer to send accused on temporary leave

Demands justice ‘even if it takes a year-long struggle’

HYDERABAD: Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University's (SBBU) student Farzana Jamali, who accused her faculty of sexual harassment, has rejected the informal offer of sending the two accused on a temporary suspension. At her hunger strike camp in Benazirabad, Jamali told the media on Monday that her uncle was called for a meeting by Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Faryal Talpur.

"Vice Chancellor [Arshad Saleem Arain] is booked in an FIR of harassment. He shouldn't be sent on a forced leave. He should be suspended," she demanded. According to Jamali, a final year student of SBBU's English department, Talpur offered her uncle that the VC could be sent on a three-month leave.

However, she and her family have rejected the offer. "We conveyed to them that I want justice even if takes a year long struggle," she said. The student accused her department's acting chairperson, Aamir Saeed Khattak, and Arain of harassment last month. An FIR was also registered on the basis of her written complaint which was submitted to the police.

Jamali also disapproved of the temporary suspension of Khattak demanding that both of them should be dismissed from service. Workers of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf and other political parties visited the camp and expressed solidarity with the student and her family.

Jamali's father Aijaz Jamali and brother Zuhaib Jamali, have been booked in two separate FIRs with the latter charged for planting an improvised explosive device. The student says both the cases were registered after she made her complaint of harassment public, and that the cases are meant to pressurise the family to withdraw the case. "Arain is a blue-eyed boy of [provincial health minister] Dr Azra Pechuho. And that's the reason he is being protected," she alleged.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2018.