NID scraps elective course that was to be taught by Rajesh Talwar’s attacker

After a lower court in Chandigarh had framed charges against Sharma in 2011 for attacking SPS Rathore, the NID alumni who is currently residing in Mumbai has a case pending against him after the Chandigarh police challenged his acquittal early this January, a development confirmed by his lawyer Harish Bhardwaj to the paper.

Incidentally, Sharma was to teach a course titled “Finding your way through the Platform: Efficient Signage System Design for the Railways” which was also featured on the posters International Open Electives 2016 put up at the NID Paldi campus. The NID website that had put up details of various electives offered in the winter school does not feature Sharma’s elective anymore, which was previously slated to be offered to a batch of 20 students at NID Bengaluru campus.

NID Director Pradyumna Vyas confirmed the scrapping of the elective and said, “The course to be offered by Utsav Sharma wasn’t finalised, it was not going to be offered. NID Graduates were invited to offer courses and I think he (Utsav) had also come forward with an elective, but it is not being offered now. I checked with the Open Electives committee and NID is not offering it.” NID faculty Vikram Parmar, one of the faculty coordinator for the international electives was not available for comment.

Sharma’s name featured among the ten odd NID alumni and design experts from world over, who by teaching the electives courses to design students will come up with ideas and inputs for the Railway Design Centre (RDC) – an outcome of NID’s MoU with Indian Railways inked this April.

After attacking Rajesh Talwar, now convicted in Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case, back in 2011- the animation design graduate was taken into judicial remand, denied bail by a Ghaziabad court and later psychologists who examined him in March in the jail had stated in their report that he is mentally disturbed and needs treatment.