KOLKATA, 28 JULY

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) authorities have decided to allow its student who was arrested on a rape charge and is now out on bail to attend classes, an official said.

The academic council, at a meeting last week, decided to allow the student concerned, Paramanand Mahaveer Toppannawar (26), to attend classes from 28 July.

However, it was decided that he cannot stay in the campus hostel till the Kolkata Police SIT complete their investigation.

The academic council meeting took place on Friday, after the second-year student visited the campus to submit an application seeking the institute's nod to attend classes, the official said.

However, his plea for staying in the same Lake View Hostel - where he had been earlier staying as a boarder and from where he was arrested - was turned down as it was a co-educational hostel and the probe was yet to be completed, the official said.

While Paramanand would be allowed to use the library, his plea for compensatory attendance for missing the classes during the incarceration period, 12 to 22 July, will be taken up for consideration later, the official said.

Paramanand will attend classes for eight more months in the two-year programme.

The council meeting, based on legal advice, was attended by IIM-C acting director Saibal Chattopadhyay, deans, and other senior faculty members/officials, the official said.

The student was arrested after a woman, who claimed to be a counsellor and not associated with the institute, had alleged that Paramanand had raped her at the IIM-C hostel on 11 July after spiking her drink. She had claimed in her FIR that she had been invited to the hostel by the accused for counselling issues, but was brutalised later on.

However, subsequently, the woman did not turn up when asked by the police to assist in the investigation, while her father claimed she was forced to make such allegations, and no such thing had taken place on 11 July.