Kamal Ghorui
MUMBAI/NASHIK: Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, also chair of TCS, has called sexual harassment complaints from the company’s Nashik office “gravely concerning and anguishing.” He said a thorough probe is underway, led by TCS Chief Operating Officer (COO) Aarthi Subramanian, to “establish facts and identify all individuals responsible.”Action has already been initiated against the accused employees, he said. Reiterating a zero-tolerance stance towards any form of coercion or misconduct by employees, Chandrasekaran said stringent action will follow for those found guilty, along with corrective measures to be implemented.On Monday, the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate J V Paliwal in Nashik extended till April 15 the police custody of the TCS Assistant General Manager (AGM – Delivery Partner), who is facing charges of abetting sexual harassment of a woman staffer by two of the six arrested TCS employees, by ignoring the staffer’s complaint.A special investigation team (SIT) arrested the 51-year-old AGM, who is also a member of the company’s POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) committee, from her Pune residence on April 10 and had secured her custodial remand that ended on Monday. The SIT produced her before the magisterial court seeking a further seven-day extension of her police custody.Public prosecutor Kiran Bendbhar told the court that a senior manager at TCS Nashik office periodically communicated through emails to the AGM about the complaints against the two employees accused of sexual harassment. The SIT has seized these emails apart from recovering 78 emails and one chat from the AGM’s devices and these needed to be analysed in her presence, he submitted. The police also need to scrutinise the AGM’s bank statements to ascertain if there were any financial transactions linked to the matter, the prosecutor said.The SIT’s remand report stated that despite being informed by the complainant about the harassment, the AGM did not take any action. “Why do you want to get highlighted? Let it go. Leave it,” the AGM told the complainant, thereby emboldening the two accused employees, the report stated.Assistant public prosecutor Aniket Avhand told the court that the SIT’s review of the AGM’s Call Detail Records (CDR) also showed 38 conversations with one accused person and another call with a second accused involved in other related cases.Defence lawyer V R Deshpande, opposing the remand plea, submitted that his client has already provided all email details to the SIT and her physical presence was not required for technical analysis. He also said his client cooperated with the SIT on March 31, days before the FIR was registered, after she was summoned for inquiry.On April 8, the Nashik police said in a release that they have arrested six employees of the IT company _ one of them on the charge of sexual exploitation of an office colleague under a breach of marriage promise, and the remaining five on charges of sexual harassment and hurting religious sentiments of their other women colleagues at different points in time over the last four years.The rape case, the first of the total nine cases of sexual offences, was registered on March 26 with the Devlali Camp police station. The remaining eight cases, including the one in which the AGM has been arrested, were registered later in phases with the Mumbai Naka police station.The police have invoked sections 75 (sexual harassment), 76 (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe), 79 (word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman), 49 (abetment) 356 (defamation), and 3(5) (common intention) against three accused in the case involving the AGM.As of now, all the six accused employees are lodged in Nashik Road Central Prison under court custody while the SIT is searching for one more employee whose whereabouts are not known so far.Nashik district collector Ayush Prasad has asked the police and a district-level committee to hold an inquiry about whether the IT company had taken measures in compliance with the POSH Act.
