Hyderabad: Times of India’s Hyderabad resident editor K.R. Sreenivas, the first to be exposed for indulging in sexual misconduct at the workplace in the explosive #MeToo campaign, has resigned.
He is the first senior official from the Times of India editorial section to step down, nine days after he was named. Sources said Sreenivas had resigned stating that he was being “targeted”.
Hours after the Twitterstorm broke, he had been asked to go on administrative leave. The TOI has shifted another of its resident editors, Satadru Oija of Kolkota, to a different role in another city. He was also named in the #MeToo campaign. The TOI said this move was done to facilitate an unbiased investigation.
Earlier, Gautam Adhikari, the founding editor of DNA Mumbai and a former executive editor of the TOI, resigned as senior fellow of the Center for American Progress (CAP) after he was accused of multiple instances of sexual misconduct.
The issue runs deeper and lies unaddressed. Jaideep Bose, the head editor of TOI, is accused of ‘misconduct’ and ‘protecting’ harasser-editors. This leaves many wondering how misconduct at the highest levels will be treated by TOI and its HR department. Former staffers have said that the HR department was unhelpful.
But the Times of India is not alone. A former student has spoken out against the prestigious Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad. Bengaluru-based Sowmya Rao, who uses the Twitter handle @sowmyarao, said in a post that in her initial days at Nalsar, students were asked to rate each other. “I felt gross then, we all did it anyway. I’ve heard that there used to be a professor who taught a friend’s batch, called Ramanamurthy. His nickname Boobanamurthy, you can guess why (sic),” she posted.
