The people of Orissa found themselves stunned on Wednesday at the allegations of sexual harassment made by an assistant lady marshal in the Assembly against the Speaker Maheshwar Mohanty.
The 29-year old unmarried Gayatri Panda accused Speaker of sexually harassing her and alleged that she was not the first victim of sexual harassment. In fact, she said many women Assembly employees earlier had gone under the same trauma, but owing to defame nobody dared to disclose the case.
While disclosing the incident Ms Panda said that Speaker used to call her alone to her chamber and sometimes used to send car at her home in the late night. Getting her alone in the chamber, she allegedly said that Mohanty used to make vulgar gestures at her.
However, the Speaker paints a different picture to the whole incident. While denying the allegations, Mohanty said that Ms Panda was going under suspension for the negligence of duty and the whole story is plotted to put pressure on him to get her way back to job.
This whole story is nothing but conspiracy hatching against me, he said. “I don’t know who is behind the conspiracy. But, whoever it is will not go on escape. I leave it to the inquiry body to look into the matter,” Mohanty added.
Sexual violence and molestation against women has been the order of the day. Daily newspapers are flooded with such stories of harassment of women at work places. The fresh story is somewhat different as it is related to the worthy post of constitutional body.
These days’ molestation and sexual harassment cases are mushrooming across the country. Whether it was molestation case of DU girls by the young candidates of Police entrance examination in New Delhi or the Mumbai mass molestation case or the many of such cases. Sometimes attitude of police have been extremely unsupportive in dealing with the victims’ grievances in such cases.
The most famous case of molestation by a police official has been named with K P S Gill, the then super cop of Punjab police, now the national Head of Indian Hockey Federation, when in mid 1990s a senior female civil servant from Punjab, Rupan Deol Bajaj, sued him successfully for sexual harassment.
Gill was convicted by the Supreme Court and slapped a hefty fine with three years of imprisonment, which was later reduced to probation.
Although it would be hurry to say who is actually culprit at this juncture of the case. Such incidents need to be thoroughly investigated without any prejudice and bias as it malign the dignity of person. The person found guilty of molestation and sexual harassment should be punished accordingly under law so as to set examples for other malefactors and thereby provide safe and secure environment to women at workplaces.
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