More than a year after the Delhi Police registered a case against former chief of The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), R K Pachauri, the probe agency has chargesheeted the scientist for allegedly sexually harassing and outraging the modesty of a former woman colleague.
Police Tuesday filed the chargesheet before Metropolitan Magistrate Shivani Chauhan, who has now fixed April 23 for taking cognizance of the chargesheet.
The chargesheet before the designated Mahila Court in Saket District Courts has charged Pachauri under Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354 A (punishment for sexual harassment), 354 D (stalking), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) under the IPC.
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Police had registered the case against Pachauri based on a criminal complaint filed by the woman in February last year. In its chargesheet, police has named 23 persons as prosecution witnesses, many of whom are former and present employees of TERI, said the sources.
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Court sources claimed the chargesheet has also relied upon the statements of the woman recorded before the magistrate and the Delhi Police.
The 1,000-page chargesheet contains annexures related to call details records and transcripts of emails and text messages. Police had earlier sent this evidence for forensic examination to Gujarat and those reports are still awaited.
The final reports of the forensic examination is likely to find a place in the supplementary chargesheet. The results include analysis of the mobile phone and laptop, which were submitted by Pachauri. He had claimed he was a victim of hacking and that his computer resources were misused.
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The woman had claimed that Pachauri sexually harassed her for nearly two years after she joined TERI in September 2013, and also alleged that he had engaged in “sexually-laden conversations” with her over emails and text messages.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
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TERI Executive Vice Chairman R K Pachauri.
