Delhi: The Harvey Weinstein scandal and the avalanche of sexual harassment claims emerging under the "metoo" hashtag have spawned a Facebook campaign in India that has already named and shamed 70 top academics.

The campaign, which prominent feminists have decried as a "vigilante approach", was started on Tuesday by Raya Sarkar, a US-based law student of Indian origin at the University of California. Sarkar asked Indian women to name the academics who had sexually harassed them on campus.

Harvey Weinstein arrives at the Oscars in 2015. Credit:AP

From the response she compiled a list which she keeps updating. The women making the accusations have not identified themselves, unlike the actresses and models who, since Weinstein's spectacular fall, have gone on record to accuse him and other men in Hollywood, of sexual harassment or rape.

In an interview with the New Indian Express newspaper, Sarkar said that she herself had never suffered sexual harassment at Jindal University in India where she studied prior to moving to the US. But she defended her initiative, saying it was important to alert female students over which professors to "watch out" for.