Jorhat, March 4: A senior lady lecturer of Dibrugarh Hanumanbux Surajmal Kanoi College in Dibrugarh district, a well known co-educational institution of Upper Assam, was allegedly attacked and grievously injured on her arm by a junior male colleague of the same department today.

Sultana, who is in her late forties, was admitted to Assam Medical College and Hospital with a deep gash and received six stitches for it. She is said to be out of danger.

Sultana Hazarika, a senior lecturer of zoology department, alleged that she was attacked by Rajesh Shah, a junior colleague from the same department this morning in the department’s common room.

The lecturer claimed that when she had come to the department’s common room around 10.45am to fetch a book from a nearby classroom where she was taking a class, Shah suddenly attacked her left hand with a sharp weapon and then fled from the scene leaving her in a pool of blood following which she raised an alarm. There was no other staff member in the common room at that time.

However, Shah, who is from Dibrugarh, has denied the allegation and has reportedly said Sultana cut herself and accused him falsely because of her “personal animosity” towards him.

Sultana told The Telegraph over phone from AMCH that Shah, who had joined the college a year ago, has been developing personal animosity towards her as she had opposed the advertisement of the post (biochemistry) by the college authorities in which Shah had joined.

“I had in principle opposed the decision of the college authorities to hire a teacher as there was already a teacher for that subject. We required teachers for another subject of the department,” Sultana said, adding that her stand did not go down well with Rajesh and a section of the college staff.

Sultana alleged that Shah has been always creating problems for her on one pretext or the other by trying to find fault with her,” she said. She said last month in a department meeting, he accused her of misusing the department laptop, which was totally a baseless charge.

Sultana said a few days back, she had complained to the college unit of the Assam College Teachers’ Association regarding the kind of “difficulties “ she was facing from Shah because of his “intimidating ” behaviour.

She said ACTA had constituted a five-member committee to investigate charges. She said this morning also she had filed a written complaint with the principal Rajee Konwar against Shah.

Sultana has lodged an FIR at the police station.

Principal Konwar told this correspondent that after she along with staff members heard about the incident she immediately made arrangements to give first aid to Sultana and then got her admitted to AMCH.

Konwar said Shah has denied the charges and alleged that the lady colleague had framed him.

The principal admitted that she had received a complaint from Sultana this morning, but was yet to read it as she was busy. She said she has lodged a written intimation with the police over the incident to investigate the case.

A senior police official said two FIRs — one by Shah and another by Sultana — have been filed at the police station and a case was expected to be registered tonight.

Attempts to contact Shah failed as his cell phone was switched off.