A dispute over heating a palak paneer lunch in a microwave has won two Indian students a $200,000 settlement from the University of Colorado Boulder over its “discriminatory” kitchen policy after a civil suit.
Aditya Prakash and his partner Urmi Bhattacheryya, both PhD students in the Anthropology Department, returned to India for good this month after the university settled the two year old dispute with them in September 2025, the Indian Express reported. The university also conferred Master’s degrees on them, but barred the two from future enrollment or employment at the university.
It all started on Sept. 5, 2023, about a year after Prakash, 34, joined the university, according to the Express report. He was heating his lunch of palak paneer in a microwave in the department when a staff member walked up to him complaining of “pungent smell” and asked him to not use the microwave to heat his food. Prakash stood his ground, not losing his cool but telling her firmly, “It’s just food. I’m heating and leaving.”
But the matter did not end there. The duo filed a civil suit in the Colorado U.S. District Court in May 2025 after the university refused to grant them Master’s degrees that PhD students are awarded enroute the PhD, he told the Express.
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The Indian duo raised concerns about “discriminatory treatment,” and how the university “engaged in a pattern of escalating retaliation.” The departmental kitchen policy had a “disproportionate and discriminatory impact on ethnic groups like South Asians,” they contended making many Indians wary of opening their lunches in shared spaces.
The “discriminatory treatment and ongoing retaliation,” Prakash and Bhattacheryya said, caused them “emotional distress, mental anguish, and pain and suffering.”
In a statement to The Indian Express, university spokesperson Deborah Mendez-Wilson stated, “The university reached an agreement with the plaintiffs and denies any liability. The university has established processes to address allegations of discrimination and harassment, and it adhered to those processes in this matter. CU Boulder remains committed to fostering an inclusive environment for students, faculty and staff.”
When the row over heating of the food occurred, Prakash says, he was a fully funded PhD student. As part of the “harassment,” he alleges, he was frequently summoned for meetings with senior faculty, accused of making “the staff feel unsafe,” and complained about at the Office of Student Conduct.
Bhattacheryya told the Express she lost her teaching assistant job without warning or explanation, and that when she and three other students brought Indian food two days after the incident, they were accused of “inciting a riot” on the campus. She says the complaints were dismissed by the Office of Student Conduct.
The couple say they were happy that 29 of their fellow students in the Anthropology Department backed them, calling out the “harmful response” to the “discriminatory food policies.”
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The students cited the Anthropology Department’s own Statement on Systemic Racism and Violence, saying, “Of all places, the Anthropology Department should be one where diversity of all kinds should be not just tolerated, but celebrated.”
Bhattacheryya says the action against her followed two days after the incident, when she invited Prakash to talk about his lived experience at a class on ethnocentrism, without naming individuals or detailing the incident.
By the time the settlement was reached, neither felt inclined to return to the U.S. as going back would mean re-entering the same system, with the same visa precarity. “I don’t see myself going back,” Prakash told the Express as it means starting afresh.
But “If this case can send out a message that this (‘food racism’) cannot be practised with impunity, that we, as Indians, will fight back, that would be the real victory,” he added.