IIM-Rohtak director Dheeraj Sharma booked for sexual harassment
Dheeraj Sharma Dheeraj Sharma
Haryana Police have booked the director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Rohtak, Dheeraj Sharma, for alleged sexual harassment of a former Assistant Professor of the institute.
Rohtak’s Women Police Station in-charge Inspector Garima said they booked the director under Sections 354 (intent to outrage woman’s modesty) and 354 A (sexual harassment) of the IPC on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the institute, Gunit Kaur Sethi, however, said that the services of the complainant were terminated on May 10 and the complaint was a fallout of the same.
The woman in her complaint to police on Tuesday said that Sharma had started harassing her soon after she joined the institute in 2017. “In one of my instructions, Mr Dheeraj Sharma started talking to me expressing his views about extramarital relationship and expressed openness about the same and asked for my views… I strongly felt uncomfortable and understood what he was indicating and hence consciously avoided the discussion any further. He then also passed an objectionable comment and vulgar taunt,” she alleged.
Recalling another incident, she alleged, the director “touched my waist and then started groping… nearly assaulted me”.
The complainant added: “Because I did not agree to his illicit demands, his behaviour changed and he started insulting me and inflicting mental stress.”
The woman said she had complained against Sharma to higher authorities on March 25. “No appropriate action on my complaint has been taken yet and hence, I seek justice,” she said in her police complaint.
Sharma did not respond to phone call or text message from The Indian Express, but institute spokesperson Sethi said the complainant was doing this to defame the director after termination of services, adding “this is all an afterthought”.
In a letter to the police on May 10, the institute’s officiating Chief Administrative Officer Col (retd) Tilak Bose had said that “the faculty and management… have strong apprehension that she may involve the management/faculty members in false, flimsy, frivolous and concocted cases to seek revenge as a consequence of her termination.”
“…This lady during the course of her employment used to frequently misbehave and threaten to lodge false criminal cases against the faculty and management… Having found her services not up to the mark despite repeated counselling the management was… constrained to terminate her services,” Bose said in his letter.
Inspector Garima said, “The accused is yet to be questioned because he has gone out of station.”
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