In March 2015, media reports appeared showing email messages sent by German Professor Annette Beck-Sickinger, the head of the biochemistry department at Leipzig University, to an anonymous male internship applicant from India.
[3] The incident occurred shortly before a scheduled official visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Screen-shots of e-mails, allegedly sent by Annette Beck-Sickinger of the Institute of Biochemistry at Leipzig University, appeared to show that she explained her actions by reference to India's 'culture of rape'.
[1][6] News reports stated that Huffington Post India contacted Prof. Beck-Sickinger who confirmed that the e-mails were real but insists that they were taken out of context.
Beck-Sickinger released a statement in which she apologized for the incident, said she had "made a mistake", and pointed out that Indian students were members of both her research group and the internship program, but did not specify their genders.
Unfortunately I do no longer accept any male Indian guests, trainees, doctorial students or PostDocs due to the severe rape problem in India.
The incident gave rise to commentaries by European academics who scrutinized the underlying issues raised by the incident: persistence of a colonial mind-set in Europe, an anti-Indian bias in European media, the philosophical justification for an indiscriminate academic embargo, an overview of sex related crimes in Europe, and the human rights situation in Germany with regard to discrimination and treatment of minority groups in Germany.
Ranjan Ghosh acknowledged that despite regulations against any racial prejudice being stringent in Germany, after the Nirbhaya case, Indians are increasingly confronted with questions about India's rape situation.