The account @SantishreeD, an unverified handle which used derogatory language against Christians and described activists as ‘mentally-ill jihadists’, has now been deleted
File image of Professor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit. Twitter/ @micnewdelhi
Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru University’s new vice-chancellor has denied that she was on Twitter after a row erupted over controversial tweets from an unverified handle in her name, according to several media reports.
The account @SantishreeD, an unverified handle which used derogatory language against Christians and described activists as ‘mentally-ill jihadists’, has now been deleted.
In an interview to NDTV, Pandit, who is JNU’s first woman VC, said that she doesn’t know who started the Twitter account and that nonsense is being spread about her.
Pandit questioned the timing of the tweets saying that they appeared right after her appointment.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Pandit said that reliable sources have told her that someone from JNU tried to sabotage her.
“I didn’t have a Twitter account. It has been found out that it has been hacked and somebody internally from JNU has done this,” Pandit said.
She added that she is being “targetted for being a woman who belongs to a marginalised section from Tamil Nadu.”
The controversy
Soon after Pandit’s appointment was announced, tweets from an account in her name began resurfacing.
In one of the tweets, she called minority institutions Jamia Millia Islamia and St Stephen’s College ‘communal campuses’.
As press release touting her appointment as JNU VC also went viral over grammatical errors. Pandit told The Indian Express that the press release was written by office staff and not her. Sharing the release on Twitter, BJP MP Varun Gandhi said “such mediocre appointments serve to damage our human capital & our youth’s future.”
Pandit replaced Jagadeesh Kumar as the VC of JNU. She was a professor in the department of politics and public administration, Savitribai Phule Pune University. She is an alumna of JNU where she completed her MPhil and PhD.
Pandit has been teaching since 1988 and has authored several books. She is fluent in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, and English.
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