WE USUALLY SPOKE DURING LATE AFTERNOON while she was between work. Muskan would slip out of her office, a consultancy firm in Mumbai, her phone pressed against her shoulder. “Basically, nothing has happened since our last conversation,” she would tell me in mid-August. It had become a routine conversation starter between us.
We started speaking in June - just over a month after her graduation from MNLU, Nagpur in Waranga, one of three national law schools in Maharashtra, which directly comes under the chancellorship of the chief justice of India. In our very first conversation, she recalled mostly her final day in college. She had finished writing her last college paper when she got the call from the VC’s office. The appeal decision by the Executive Authority in her case had arrived.
“Taking into consideration the overall circumstances, the past conduct of the Appellant and the incidence dated 13/10/2024, the committee has rightly come to a finding of misconduct (sexual harassment),” she read with a paused breath, but quickly leafed over to the next page: “In view of these circumstances, we are of the considered opinion that the findings of the ICC and its recommendations no. 1, 2 and 3…are upheld.” To lay eyes, this was a win, but her heart sank.
