A legal settlement from September 2025 has recently resurfaced online and gone viral because of its unusual focus on – palak paneer!
The University of Colorado Boulder settled a federal lawsuit in September 2025 by paying $200,000 to two Indian PhD candidates, Aditya Prakash and Urmi Bhattacharyya.
Read on to find out what happened at the university!
University of Colorado Boulder Settlement Over Palak Paneer Goes Viral
The couple alleged discrimination over the smell of South Asian food and claimed they were subjected to a hostile environment.
The dispute originated on September 5, 2023, when Prakash heated his Indian lunch at the university and had a confrontation with staff.
The lawsuit was filed in May 2025 and included claims of discrimination against South Asian food smells and a hostile campus environment.
Their case was supported by 29 peers.
The couple later accused the university of retaliation, including loss of teaching roles and withholding of their degrees.
Settlement Includes $200,000 Payout, Degree Awards, and Permanent Separation from University
As part of the settlement, the university paid $200,000, awarded both of them Master’s degrees, and barred them from any future association with the university.
The university denied any liability despite agreeing to the settlement terms.
After the settlement resurfaced online, it went viral on social media.
One X user commented, “Courts awarded two foreign nationals 200,000 USD because they were offending people at their university by microwaving their food, what a joke.”
Another user wrote, “They don’t need future enrolment and employment after winning $2,00,000😂”
A further comment stated, “look at the leftie / conglus in the replies saying how they shouldn’t have heated up palak paneer, mind you, in the campus microwave. basically brown sepoys telling them to swallow systemic racism because now they’ve ‘ruined it for all’.”
