NEW DELHI: K R Nayar , one of the senior-most professors in Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health , has been suspended with immediate effect on charges of sexually harassing a female student.

JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory confirmed the suspension, saying the order "has been issued". He said further action will be decided upon by the varsity’s executive council and that the suspension "will stay till further orders".

TOI tried to contact Prof Nayar at his home for his reaction to the suspension. A family member took the call and said the professor had "no comments".

The order, issued on Friday, comes five months after the student filed a complaint with the university’s Gender Sensitization Committee Against Sexual Harassment on November 1, 2012. The harassment, those involved with investigations said, started in March 2012. But the student refrained from complaining because she felt nobody would believe her as Nayar is a professor of repute. It was only because of unflinching family support that she finally took on her tormentor.

However, no one is celebrating yet, said her fellow students. Students TOI spoke to on Saturday, mostly those in the forefront of the battle against the teacher, said the suspension order was more like a half-victory, as he is yet to be dismissed from the campus. "Besides," one of them said, "just a suspension cannot heal the emotional pain." A general apprehension among the students is also that it is not just about punishing Nayar and ending his career in JNU, it is about doing something to stop his "activities" that may continue beyond JNU.

The case had seen sustained campaigning in JNU for the past few months. "We are happy that Nayar has been immediately suspended. We all feel victorious in some sense as we see this as our own case too. I feel that after the Nirbhaya incident, things have changed," said Smriti Minocha. She said she was moved by the widespread support from fellow male students, too, and that for the first time, the faculty (in this case from Nayar’s department) openly expressed solidarity with the cause of gender justice on the campus.

After the V-C’s suspension order on Friday, students put up posters across the campus demanding prompt implementation of recommendations made by the GSCASH, which has already submitted its inquiry report to the administration for further action. Ashutosh Deep, a PhD student in Nayar’s centre, said, "I felt bad initially because the professor was confident he would get away. He also tried to show that the girl in question was mentally unstable, which we know is far from the truth." Deep recalled a four-year-old case in which a JNU professor was suspended on similar charges. "He was suspended for a year, but was reinstated within six months," he said, acknowledging that the speedy action in the current case is unprecedented.

(Names of the students have been changed to protect their identity)