Delhi University suspends Faculty of Law PhD student for slapping professor

Delhi University (DU) has suspended a PhD scholar of its Faculty of Law after he assaulted a professor.

DU Proctor Manoj Kumar Singh suspended Shubham Singh, 31, with immediate effect and barred him from campus based on CCTV footage showing him repeatedly slapping professor Anupam Jha at Umang Bhawan on August 17. Delhi Police has filed a first information report (FIR) at the Maurice Nagar police station.

Jha, who has taught at the Faculty of Law for about 23 years, told Hindustan Times that he suffered an elbow injury and a bruised hand. DU has also formed a three-member committee, headed by Professor Rajeev Gupta of the chemistry department, to probe the incident.

The incident has been linked to Singh's 2025 PhD interview, where Jha was a panellist.

In an Instagram video posted after the suspension, Singh offered his own account. He said he had been linked to the Faculty of Law since 2017 as he did his LL.B., LL.M. and PhD there. Despite not being selected for the LL.M. programme in 2020 and 2021, or for the PhD's first round, he never applied elsewhere.

He recounted an an LL.M. research exercise where he had chosen to review the book India that is Bharat, authored by Senior Advocate J Sai Deepak. The evaluating professor dismissed the book as fiction and warned that pursuing a book review might not be the best idea. Singh said that this episode shaped his PhD topic.

Singh's PhD topic was "Exploring the Continuation of Colonial Legacy of State Interaction with Religion vis a vis the Two Realms of Bharatiya Secularism". In the video, he said that he was so attached to the title of the book that he believed it was the truth and wanted to prove the same in his research.

Singh alleged that Jha asked him the same question at both interview rounds: why "Bharatiya" and not "Indian" secularism. He alleged that as per Jha, he chose the topic because it would secure easy admission, owing to "backing" Singh would receive. Singh attributed his non-selection in Phase 1 to this part of the interview.

Thereafter, he alleged that PhD and guest faculty selections at DU involved undue influence or payments. He was told to use "back channels" to reach out to faculty to pay and secure admission.

He said that between his Phase 1 and Phase 2 interviews, Jha had admitted to being an international law expert, not a constitutional law expert. Singh claimed Jha still asked him the same question in the second round.

He blamed the committee that interviews PhD candidates for what he called arbitrary questioning and appealed to the Vice-Chancellor to determine whether he or the system was at fault.