MIDDLETOWN–A professor who has been in some trouble with the law in the past is being accused of a new crime.
Ravi Shankar was arrested on July 29 for shoplifting from a Home Depot. He was charged with larceny in the third degree and released on a $5,000 bond. He is due in court on August 12.
According to the arraignment report, Shankar was in the store, located at 909 Washington St., at 1:30 when he took items off the shelves and brought them to the return counter for store credit. The items were worth $1,339.75, and he left with the store credit.
All items have information in the bar code about whether they have been purchased, and these items hadn’t been. An asset protection employee followed him and asked him to come back inside to wait for police.
Shankar told police it was a misunderstanding and that the officers were “taking their word for it,” referring to the store employees.
In December, Shankar was arrested and charged with crashing his car and leaving the scene. He was also arrested a second time for driving with a suspended license.
Before that he had previous convictions for two DUIs, operating with a suspended license, reckless driving over 85 mph, interfering with police, giving police false statements in a credit card fraud scheme and violating his probation. He served a 90-day sentence broken up into several periods.
Shankar has worked at CCSU for more than 12 years as a poetry and creative writing professor. While serving the 90-day sentence he was promoted by CCSU and the state Board of Regents.
The school’s president admitted they moved forward with the promotion from tenured associate professor to full professor without knowing he was in jail, but they decided to move forward anyway because promotions are solely based on academic achievements. A week later, the state Board of Regents reconsidered the decision to promote him, but his promotion was not rescinded.
The university said “no comment” when asked about Shankar’s future with the school.
