Lambasting the police for its “faulty investigation” in an FIR registered against IIM Rohtak's director Prof Dheeraj Sharma by a former female assistant professor alleging sexual harassment, a local court in Rohtak has directed for further probe into the case. Sharma is also facing accusations that he is not eligible for the post. The court of Judicial Magistrate First Class Aditya Singh Yadav while refusing to accept the case-cancellation-report filed by the police, ordered that all charges that were levelled by the complainant against Sharma in the FIR registered against him in 2018 be re-investigated. “From the perusal of cancellation report, it can be acknowledged that the investigation.is faulty. the investigation has not been carried out on the allegations mentioned in the detailed complaint given by complainant to police. Thus in the interest of justice, as doubts have been raised with regard to cancellation report, it would be appropriate if investigating officer is directed to further investigate the matter so as to bring out the truth of allegation levelled by the complainant in the original complaint on the basis of which FIR was lodged. Accordingly, investigating officer is directed to conduct further investigation in this matter as per law,” the court said in the order pronounced on September 6. The court also fixed next date of hearing on December 12. Based on the complaint filed by the former assistant professor, an FIR was lodged on May 29, 2018 under Sections 354 (outraging modesty) and 354A (sexual harassment) of Indian Penal Code against Sharma. The court passed the order while hearing an application moved by the complainant under section 173 (8) CrPC for further investigation challenging the closure report filed by the police in favour of Sharma. Appearing for the police, the additional public prosecutor contended that the investigating officer never favoured the accused. During investigation it was revealed that complainant’s service was terminated from IIM on May 10, 2018 and it was after that she filed the complaint of sexual harassment against the accused, the additional public prosecutor contended. It was further contended that the complainant, during the course of investigation, failed to prove the allegations she had levelled against Sharma. The counsel contended that nothing incriminating was found against Sharma, therefore, a cancellation report was filed in the FIR by the police. However, directing the investigating officer to re-investigate the case, the court cited six reasons. “Firstly, the complainant has alleged that she gave an indicative complaint against Sharma to higher authorities on 25.03.2018. In that letter, complainant avoided disclosing minute details of her sexual harassment and mentioned some of the other issues. The complainant thought that the board of IIM would take notice and Sharma would mend his ways and stop harassing the complainant but instead, he started exercising pressure and threatened the complainant to compromise the matter internally and to withdraw her complaint. Police officials made no efforts to take the notice of complaint dated 25.03.2018 filed by the complainant,” read the order. Stating the second reason, the order read: “Complainant alleged that police has filed cancellation report merely on the basis of statement of persons who were not eyewitnesses and were under the immediate influence of the accused. Investigating officer made no effort to discover the truth and carried out the investigation in a manner favourable to accused for some extraneous reasons”. Thirdly, the court said that “it has been alleged by complainant that police officials made no efforts to recover the CCTV footage of the concerned areas”. The court, citing the fourth reason, added that the complainant had mentioned the incidents of sexual harassment in the petition filed by her in the court regarding her termination of service from the IIM, but the police did not take note of that. The court further added that complainant also alleged that accused made efforts to show that complainant was an extremely poor faculty member and her record was below average and despite the complainant providing proof that her credentials were “excellent” as faculty member of IIM, Rohtak, the police ignored the same and did not take notice of the same “under the influence of accused”. The sixth reason, the court said was that despite complainant alleging that Sharma has criminal antecedents, the same was “not verified by the police officials”.
