Overview
- Orsini, professor emerita at SOAS and a noted authority on Hindi literature, was stopped at Delhi airport on October 21 despite holding a valid five-year e-visa.
- She told The Wire she was being deported and that immigration officials provided no reason for denying entry.
- Reports say she arrived via Hong Kong after attending an academic conference in China and was planning a personal visit.
- Indian academics Ramachandra Guha, Apoorvanand and Mukul Kesavan condemned the move as harmful to scholarship.
- The incident is the latest in a string of entry denials or OCI actions involving foreign scholars, including Filippo Osella, Lindsay Bremner, Nitasha Kaul and Ashok Swain, following earlier efforts to tighten political clearance for academic engagements.