THANE/NASHIK: A team from the Nashik Crime Branch on Friday reached Mumbra in Thane district in search of a 26-year-old woman staffer accused of subjecting a co-worker to ‘religious harassment’ at the TCS Nashik office. Originally from Nashik, this staffer was recently transferred to Mumbai after her husband secured employment with a private company in Mumbra as a logistics officer.A Mumbra police officer, who did not wish to be named, told TOI, “Her husband told investigators that a relative took her back to Nashik a couple of days ago.”As part of the ongoing probe, a team from the Nashik Crime Branch Unit 1 tracked down and detained her husband from his workplace in Mumbra. Till last reports came in, he was being questioned to ascertain her whereabouts and gather further details related to the case.The woman staffer is now preparing to file an anticipatory bail plea before a Nashik court, citing pregnancy as one of the grounds for relief. Her lawyer Baba Sayyad told TOI on Friday, “We are finalising the anticipatory bail plea and support documents in consultation with our client’s father, who is in Nashik for this purpose.”Sayyad said, “Going by the FIR, the case against our client is pertaining to hurting religious sentiments. It is the Constitutional right of our client to seek anticipatory bail. Our client is in her early stage of pregnancy and hence that also would be another reason that she was seeking anticipatory bail. We will be processing the plea in a couple of days with the Nashik sessions court.”Meanwhile, the Mumbra police officer said, “The couple moved to a rented apartment in the Amrut Nagar area in Feb this year. Following her transfer, she was commuting to the company’s offices in Malad and Hiranandani. Police said the staffer has been named a co-accused in the first of the total nine cases of sexual offences and religious harassment registered so far by Nashik police.The first case registered on March 26 by Deolali Camp police station is related to a woman employee accusing her colleague of hiding his marital status and sexually exploiting her on the pretext of helping her secure the job and reneging on his promise of marrying her. As a co-accused, the woman staffer is facing charges of making objectionable statements that hurt the religious sentiments of the complainant.Officials said the woman was residing in Mumbra for the past two months before she went incommunicado and her whereabouts are not known.The Special Investigation Team (SIT) in Nashik has formed three teams to trace the woman staffer. “Our team questioned her husband, who claimed she had gone to her relative’s place. Our team visited the relative’s place too, but it was locked and their phone numbers were switched off. We have dispatched our teams to some other locations as part of our search.”A four-member Fact Finding Committee has been appointed by the National Commission for Women after the allegations of sexual harassment were levelled. The NCW has suo motu appointed the committee that will be visiting Nashik on Saturday.The committee will conduct an on-the-spot inquiry at the TCS facility in Nashik and any other relevant locations, examine the circumstances leading to the incident and assess the response of concerned authorities, interact with victims, police officials, company representatives and other relevant stakeholders to gather evidence and identify lapses, if any, and recommend appropriate action against those found responsible.
