Days after a senior lady IPS officer filed a complaint with Tamil Nadu DGP J.K. Tripathy, accusing Special DGP (Law and Order) Rajesh Das of misbehaving with her while on duty, the government has constituted a six-member panel to probe into the complaint. An order in this regard was issued by Home Secretary S.K. Prabakar.
Rajesh Das has been transferred and kept in the waiting list.
IAS officer and Additional Chief Secretary (Planning and Development) Jayashree Raghunandan will be the presiding officer of the six-member panel. IPS officers Seema Agarwal (ADGP, Headquarters), A. Arun (IGP, Administration), B. Shamoondeswari (DIG, Kancheepuram Range), V.K. Ramesh Babu (Chief Administrative Officer, Office of the DGP) and Loretta Jhona (Head, Programme Management, IJM) are the other members of the panel. "The committee shall take necessary further course of action as per the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 on the said complaint," said the order issued by the home department.
The lady officer, posted in one of the northern districts of Tamil Nadu, alleged that DGP Rajesh Das misbehaved with her during the tour of Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami to the central districts. She said the incident took place in the vehicle of the accused. Although there were several attempts by senior officers in the department to persuade her to withdraw the complaint, she refused to budge.
Though the higher officials in the home department were hesitant to take up the sexual harassment complaint as Rajesh Das was the Special DGP, sources say, the political leadership in Tamil Nadu did not want the issue to blow up as the elections are nearing. DMK Lok Sabha MP Kanimozhi had, on Wednesday, took up the issue on social media. “When a woman IPS officer is sexually harassed by a higher ranked officer and the CM takes no notice of it, what hope do ordinary women have in this regime,” she had said in a tweet. Later, in a statement, DMK president M.K. Stalin took on the chief minister for protecting officers like Rajesh Das. “If the government and chief minister Palanisami continue to protect the officers, the DMK will launch a massive protest,” Stalin said.
Hours later, the probe panel was constituted and Rajesh Das, who was supervising the security arrangements for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Coimbatore, was asked to get back to Chennai immediately. In the meantime, transfer orders were issued and Rajesh Das has been kept in compulsory wait list.
This is the second time a sexual harassment complaint against an IPS officer has shaken the state bureaucracy. In August 2018, a woman SP had accused her senior officer, S. Murugan IPS, the then joint director of Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC), of sexually harassing her. She had filed a complaint and a probe panel was formed then to enquire into it. An internal committee was formed under DGP-level officer Lakshmi Prasad. But she had to approach the Madras High Court for speedy justice. The woman SP alleged that the committee was favouring the perpetrator. Later, the case was transferred to Telengana.
The issue has put the Tamil Nadu police in a fix.
