Kamal Ghorui
NASHIK: The 26-year-old woman employee accused of subjecting a co-worker to “religious harassment” at the TCS Nashik office filed an anticipatory bail plea before the Nashik Road Sessions Court, citing pregnancy as one of the grounds for relief.Her lawyer, Baba Sayyed, told TOI on Saturday, “We have applied for the anticipatory bail plea of our client in the court of Nashik Road Sessions Judge Kedar Joshi, and the court will hear our plea on Monday.” Sayyed, along with lawyer Rahul Kasliwal, who filed the application on behalf of the accused, said, “One of the grounds is that she is not the main accused. Secondly, the punishment is up to three years in the case pertaining to hurting religious sentiments filed against my client. Hence, we have sought her pre-arrest bail.”“The other grounds are that the woman is pregnant, and also that there has been delay in filing the complaint against the accused,” Sayyed added.In a related case, the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate R C Narwadiya on Saturday remanded the two accused, named in four out of the total nine cases of alleged sexual harassment and the religious conversion bids at TCS Nashik office, to police custody up till April 20.The Special Investigation Team, probing all the nine cases, arrested the two in the third out of the four cases against them, and the court on Saturday remanded them in two-day police custody.The SIT also added one more section, 78 of BNS, for following the victim through electronic communication despite her clear disinterest.“The investigation revolves around allegations that the accused engaged in persistent stalking and sexual harassment of women colleagues despite their refusals, eventually leading to the addition of section 78,” said Kiran Bendbhar, assistant director of public prosecution.“During the arrest and investigations, the police seized high-end cellphones from both suspects. A thorough technical analysis of these devices is critical to establish the sequence of events and uncover further evidence. So we want their physical custody in order to ensure we get the passwords for the phones, various applications, social media sites and others using which we will be able to find out more details related to the statements provided by the victims,” said Aniket Avhad, the assistant public prosecutor.Defence counsel for these accused, Baba Sayyed, however, maintained that the SIT is seeking physical custody for no valid reason. “We told the court that the police have the ethical hackers and machinery that can crack codes and passwords of the mobile phones, applications and even the social media websites for which physical custody is not required,” said Sayyed.
