A woman working in the office of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Bangalore had accused a close aide of the businessman-turned-politician of sexual harassment.
She was sacked and served an ex-parte injunction that now restricts her from speaking to anyone about the matter, reported The Wire.
The woman joined Chandrasekhar’s office on October 9, 2017 on a one-year contract, which was to be automatically renewed at the end of the term. She reported to Abhinav Khare, a close friend of Chandrasekhar and also the COO of Asianet, one of minister’s media companies.
A month after joining, she alleged sexual misconduct by Khare in November and filed a complaint directly with Chandrasekhar.
Reportedly, the company tried to dismiss the matter at first. However, an ad-hoc investigation committee was later set-up to probe the allegations. The committee handed over its report in June 2018, taking over double the time to investigate the matter than is stipulated under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace law.
The committee’s report backed-up her accusations and recommended a range of punitive measures against Khare.
There are no records to state whether the company accepted or rejected the report. By the end of September, Mahajan started questioning the progress made on committee’s recommendations. She also refused to re-join work if she still had to report to Khare.
During India’s #MeToo campaign rage in the past few weeks, when the aggrieved woman tried speaking up against Khare and Chandrashekar on the Twitter, Khare rushed to court on October 8 and served an ex-parte injunction restraining the company from acting on the committee’s recommendation.
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The injunction also barred her from “speaking or writing or communicating” any details about the charges against Khare.
Surya Raju, head of HR for Chandrasekhar’s office in Bangalore, told The Wire that Mahajan’s contract with the company had ended on October 8 and that she no longer was an employee there. When asked about the status of her sexual harassment complaint, he claimed, “the enquiry is over, we have acted on the recommendations … the company has zero tolerance towards sexual harassment.”