Students and teachers at Visva-Bharati, the alma mater of Jawaharlal Nehru University teacher Sucharita Sen, on Monday condemned the attack on her and others in Delhi on Sunday evening.

A large number of students and faculty members of Visva-Bharati marched on Monday to protest the attack and express solidarity with JNU students. They flayed the RSS and its arms for allegedly perpetrating the attack.

Sen, a professor with 19 years of teaching experience, went to JNU as a student in the early 1980s after completing her graduation in geography from Visva-Bharati. She was one of the dozens of faculty members and students of JNU who suffered serious injuries in the attack.

Sumantra Mukherjee, one of Sen’s teachers at Visva-Bharati, was shocked when he heard about the attack on one of his favourite students.

“It is very unfortunate that a teacher like Sucharita — a sincere student, a great teacher and a wonderful human being — was among those who had to face such brutality…. The guilty should be punished and I wish Sucharita a prompt recovery,” said Mukherjee, a retired professor of geography, who is a grandson of author Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay.

Mukherjee is also an alumnus of JNU. He completed his master’s and MPhil in geography there.

“I used to inspire all of my sincere students to go to JNU for higher studies. Sucharita was one of them. She went there as a student and became a professor there. It makes me very proud,” said Mukherjee. “It has hurt me immensely that she was beaten up inside the hostel, on the campus by goons.”

There are several Visva-Bharati teachers who were students of Sen.

“It is unimaginable that masked goons thrashed someone like her. It is a black day for all of us,” said a Visva-Bharati teacher who did her master’s and PhD at JNU.

Sudipta Bhattacharyya, a professor of economics and JNU alumnus who knew Sen for several years, condemned the attack.