ON A QUIET street with small, stylish houses in Kaviyan Nagar in Aruppukottai town 40km from Madurai, stood a deserted house between two vacant plots. A dusty scooter and scattered newspapers lay within its locked iron gates. As I pressed the bell outside, a woman from a neighbouring house called out: “Nirmala Devi is not at home. She came here three days ago with her head tonsured, but left in a few hours. These days, even when she is at home, she rarely comes out.”
An assistant professor (now suspended) at Devanga Arts College in Aruppukottai, Nirmala earned ill fame on April 15 last year when social media crackled with an audio clip of her promising female students money and jobs in return for sexual favours for “top officials”in Madurai Kamaraj University.
Next day, Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, to whom Nirmala had made references, appointed retired IAS officer R. Santhanam as a one-man inquiry commission. The college secretary R. Ramasamy filed a complaint that evening on behalf of four third-year students, and the local police arrested Nirmala.
At a news conference on April 17 Purohit denied knowing Nirmala. “I have not seen her face till date,”he said. The same day, the case was transferred to the crime branch CID.
On April 19, the head of the CID, K. Jayanth Murali, was replaced by Amaresh Pujari, an action political parties alleged was intended to shield the culprits.
Though Santhanam submitted his report on May 14, the Madras High Court ordered that it should not be made public as it might affect the CID investigation. “The governor had earlier said that the report would be made public,”said P. Suganthi, general secretary of All India Democratic Women’s Association, who had filed a petition, in vain, for transfer of the case to the CBI.
In the charge-sheet it filed in the High Court in September last year, the CID said the “top officials”that Nirmala had referred to were her co-accused, assistant professor (since suspended) V. Murugan and former research scholar S. Karuppasamy. It recorded statements of the four students, but Suganthi said it had ignored a complaint that they had first made to their college principal. Suganthi also asked why Nirmala’s claim that she was intimate with Murugan and Karuppasamy and that she had spoken to the students on their instructions had been leaked.
Were Murugan and Karuppasamy powerful enough to grant the girls jobs? Said Murugan’s sister-in-law Suvitha: “Why would Murugan do this? He is just an administrative staff. He only saw Nirmala once, when she came to the university to do a refresher course.”
On March 20, Nirmala was released on bail. Police officers said no new accused was likely to be named and the case might even be quashed.
Appearing in a lower court on July 8, Nirmala squatted on the ground, closed her eyes as if meditating and said, “The goddess Kamakshi has entered my mind. I have been acquitted. The girls who complained against me have killed themselves.” She then began cutting her plaited hair and throwing it on her head.
“She is in depression,” said her lawyer Pasumpon Pandian, “and is undergoing psychiatric treatment.” She was an in-patient for a short while at a health centre in Tirunelveli.
Her family has borne the brunt of the case. “Please leave us alone,” said her brother, Ravi, who had signed her bail surety. Her husband, Saravana Pandian, has left Aruppukottai along with their daughters. The couple have filed for divorce.