Justice Sought in Death of Indian Professor

Activists in India and around the world are demanding in a petition that President Pratibha Patil investigate the mysterious death of a gay professor last week.

On Wednesday, Srinivas Ramchandra Siras, a prominent modern languages scholar, was found dead in his apartment outside Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh. The professor recently had been reinstated after the school's vice chancellor suspended him in February for being caught on film in a gay sex sting.

According to the Hindustan Times, the cause of death remains uncertain.

"The panel of doctors who conducted the post-mortem said the academic could have died due to poisoning or had a heart attack," the Times reported.

The petition from the Integrated Network of Sexual Minorites asks President Patil, who serves as the chancellor of AMU, to suspend and investigate the vice chancellor of the university, pursue a transparent autopsy, and examine the campus circumstances that led to the suspension of Siras.

"We urge you to take immediate steps to get justice for a gentle, law-abiding and dignified professor against the harassment and ill-treatment meted out to him by the Aligarh Muslim University in the weeks leading to his death," says the petition.