Palak paneer ‘smell’ dispute: How Indian PhD students won a $200,000 discrimination case in the US

Dubai: What began as a routine lunch break — reheating palak paneer in a shared microwave — ended in a courtroom victory, a $200,000 settlement, and a hard-won affirmation of dignity for two Indian doctoral students in the United States.

For Aditya Prakash and Urmi Bhattacharyya, both PhD scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder, the smell of Indian food became the flashpoint for what they say was systemic discrimination against international students — a fight they ultimately won, though at a personal cost.

The incident dates back to September 5, 2023. Prakash, now 34 and a PhD student in anthropology at the time, was heating his lunch in a departmental microwave when a female staff member approached him and objected to the “smell” of his food.

She told him not to use the microwave to heat his lunch.

“The smell was pungent, she said,” Prakash later recalled. “I told her this was a common space and that I had every right to use it.”

What hurt more than the complaint, he said, was what it represented, multiple Indian media reports said.

“My food is my pride,” Prakash said. “Ideas of what smells good or bad are culturally determined.”

When a facilities staff member later suggested that even reheating broccoli was prohibited because of its odour, Prakash pushed back.

“I asked, how many groups of people do you know who face racism because they eat broccoli?” he said.

The disagreement didn’t end in the kitchen.

Prakash’s partner, Urmi Bhattacharyya, 35, who was also pursuing a PhD at the university, supported him — and soon found herself drawn into what the couple allege was a pattern of retaliation.

Prakash says he was repeatedly summoned to meetings with senior faculty and accused of making the staff member “feel unsafe”.

Bhattacharyya, meanwhile, was abruptly removed from her teaching assistant role, allegedly without explanation.

Then came the turning point.

The department, they say, refused to confer the master’s degrees that PhD students are typically awarded en route to completing their doctorates — degrees they had already earned.

“That’s when we knew this was no longer about a microwave,” Prakash said. “We decided to seek legal recourse.”

In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for Colorado, Prakash and Bhattacharyya accused the university of creating a hostile academic environment, withholding earned degrees, and discriminating against them based on culture and identity.

The complaint argued that the response to their food was a symptom of deeper systemic bias against international students, particularly those who did not conform to dominant cultural norms.

In September 2025, the University of Colorado Boulder agreed to a $200,000 civil rights settlement (about ₹1.8 crore), formally ending the case.

The university also conferred the master’s degrees that had been withheld.

However, the settlement included a condition: The couple would be barred from future enrolment or employment at the university.

The university has said it agreed to the settlement without admitting liability, adding that it has procedures in place to address allegations of discrimination and harassment.

Earlier this month, Bhattacharyya shared the outcome on Instagram, where her post quickly went viral.

“This year, I fought a fight,” she wrote. “A fight for the freedom to eat what I want and to protest at will — no matter the colour of my skin, my ethnic extraction, or my unflinchingly unchanged Indian accent.”

She spoke of the toll the ordeal took.

“I endured startling health reversals I’d never encountered before,” she wrote. “My self-respect and confidence — things I had always jealously safeguarded — were steadily chipped away.”

But she refused to frame the story as one of defeat.

“I will not be humbled by injustices. I will not be silent. I will certainly kowtow to no one.”

The couple have since returned to India.

As news of the settlement spread, social media users flooded the comments with messages of support — and humour.

One user wrote that he planned to celebrate with “more palak paneer.”
Another said: “This is what raising your voice the right way looks like.”

“Palak paneer ka sharp smell nahi aaya toh kya khaaya?” one Instagram user joked. “That’s aroma for us.”

Beyond the memes, many said the case resonated because it touched on a familiar experience for immigrants and international students — the subtle policing of culture, food and identity.

For Prakash and Bhattacharyya, the case was never just about compensation.

“It was about dignity,” Prakash said. “And about saying that our culture doesn’t need permission to exist.”