Tribal girl alleges molestation by hostel accountant in Solan

Acting on a written complaint by one of the “victims”,the police have arrested hostel accountant Pawan Goel (48). A Solan court remanded him in police custody till February 15 on Wednesday.

Goel’s wife Kiran is the warden of the Adivasi Balika Chatravas,Salogra,being run and funded by the Adim Jati Sewak Sangh,New Delhi. The hostel accommodates 31 tribal girls,a majority of them from Kinnaur district,and five from Ranchi in Jharkhand. These girls are students of Class VI to X in the Government Senior Secondary School,Salogra.

The complainant,a 15-year-old girl student of Class X,is undergoing treatment for depression at the paediatrics ward of the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Shimla.

She approached the police with the help of a local NGO,Umang Foundation. Her complaint to Additional Director General of Police (CID) I D Bhandari mentioned various instances where Goel allegedly molested and sexually harassed at least nine girls,all from Kinnaur. She said Goel would ask the girls to massage his body and often kissed them. Various other acts that amount to molestation have been listed in the complainant,according to the police.

All hostellers have left for their homes for winter vacation,barring the five girls from Jharkhand. Talking to The Indian Express,one of them said though she had heard of such complaints against Goel,nothing ever happened in front of her.

“Last year,when the same girl had complained to the school principal that he (Goel) asked us to massage his body,the principal had called him. I heard no such complaint after that. Even if anything of the sort has happened,we are not sure because most of the girls named in the complaint lived in another room,which is closer to the room where Pawan sir and his family stays,” she added.  

Though Kiran Goel agreed that “many girls used to massage my husband’s legs”,she denied the allegations of molestation. “How can I let such a thing happen? When this girl (the complainant) came back from Dussehra holidays,she had brought a mobile phone with her. We had objected to that. At various points,we stopped the girls from spending time on the balcony as passers-by would stare and pass comments. It seems,annoyed by all this,she took revenge by filing such a complaint,” she said.

The hostel is run from a two-storey building in Salogra’s Barad Colony,populated by the economically weaker section,and is quite far from the school where these girls study.

The hostel is funded by the grant released by the Government of India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs through the Adim Jati Sewak Sangh.

No official from the state’s tribal affairs and education departments had visited the hostel till Wednesday evening. They kept passing the buck on each other and finally decided that the matter was not in their jurisdiction as it pertained to Central funding. No one from the Sangh either came to the hostel to enquire about the state of affairs.

Director,Social Justice and Empowerment,Maneesh Garg said: “Since this hostel was getting funds from the Centre,we will take up the issue with the ministry concerned to stop funding and blacklist the hostel.” He added that the department had no power to regulate such institutions.

Ajai Srivastava of Umang Foundation has demanded that the state government ask all deputy commissioners to submit an inquiry report on the status of such hostels running in their districts.

Superintendent of Police,Solan,Prem Kumar Thakur said Goel had been booked under Section 354 of the IPC and Section 3 of the SC&ST Act. He said the accused was in police custody,adding that further inquiry and statements of other hostellers would determine the further course of investigations.