People v Preds, the group which outed an Indian-origin UC San Diego professor Nisarg Jaydeep Shah, for engaging with a minor over sex chats, revealed the messages that the professor exchanged with the decoy 14-year-old. A representative from the group confronted Nisarg at a grocery store and released the video of the entire encounter. Nisarg, in the video, admitted that he felt horrible about what he did and what he was going to do. “I need to maybe get help or something,” he said in the video, though the person confronting him was not convinced that Nisarg was genuinely repentant or whether he was just scared that he got caught. The group has now revealed the detailed chats, as Nisarg was not arrested at the scene, though two patrol vehicles from San Diego Police Department arrived at the scene. They told the activist that since the group that caught Nisarg was not law enforcement, Nisarg could not be arrested based on their claim but his phone would be checked and his engagement with an alleged minor would be investigated. In the chats, released by People v Preds, Nisarg and the activist posing as a 14-year-old exchanged messages on August 2. The activist asked Nisarg if he had engaged with someone of his age before. The conversation went on with the activist asking Nisarg for a photo of him before he caught him at the grocery store where Nisarg apparently came to buy lube to use it later on the 14-year-old he thought he was chatting with. After he was taken by the San Diego Police for interrogation, he denied all the allegations and he was let off as no charges were framed against him. The University of California also came under fire for not immediately suspending the professor. “We have been made aware of the allegations against Nisarg J Shah. We will cooperate with all law enforcement agencies as needed during any investigation. The health, well-being and safety of our campus community members is our top priority,” the varsity said. Nisarg is an associate professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at UC San Diego. He got his PhD in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he received the Cancer Research Institute’s Irvington postdoctoral fellowship to develop biomaterials to enhance T-cell immunity. Nisarg studied BSc in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where his research focused on developing nanoparticle-based delivery systems for cancer therapy.
