Nida Khan, 26, the alleged absconding employee of a BPO associated with Tata Consultancy Services in Nashik, moved the Nashik Sessions Court seeking anticipatory bail on Saturday.
Khan is one of eight accused in the case related to sexual harassment and religious coercion at a BPO in Nashik. While seven of the accused have been arrested, Khan evades security authorities, although her family says she is not a fugitive. All eight employees were suspended.
Nida’s defense lawyers Rahul Kasliwal and Baba Syed said the court is expected to take Khan’s anticipatory bail application for hearing on Monday.
“She was falsely implicated in the case. She has no record of any kind of criminal activity,” Kasliwal said.
The Nashik city police registered nine FIRs against eight employees of a BPO linked to TCS, including one FIR against Khan. The FIRs were registered in Nashik between March 26 and April 3, following complaints from nine employees, who accused their senior colleagues, including squad leaders, of alleged sexual assault and other types of religious harassment and coercion.
In the FIR against Khan, registered at Devlali police station, one of the victims accused her of hurting religious sentiments and making objectionable comments about a Hindu god.
Although initial media reports claimed that Khan was the HR director at BPO, TCS has since issued a statement saying she did not hold the position and was an “operations assistant”.
Khan’s uncle also told HT on April 17 that after her marriage last year, Khan moved to Mumbai in January this year to be with her husband. She was working at the company’s BPO in Malad, Mumbai, until she was suspended on April 9, her uncle claimed, adding that she was pregnant.
Police have formed three teams in Mumbai to track down and arrest Khan, whose family insists she is not a fugitive.
Read also: ‘Pregnant’, ‘not HR’: What Nida Khan’s family said in Nashik BPO case
Meanwhile, a four-member fact-finding team of the National Commission for Women has begun investigations into the high-profile case, which began as an investigation into workplace misconduct but quickly expanded in scope after multiple complaints.
Monica Arora, one of the committee members, said they would speak to all stakeholders in the case as part of the investigation. The team is likely to visit the company’s office in Nashik on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the court of Additional Chief Justice RC Narwadia on Saturday extended police custody of the accused, Raza Memon and Shafi Sheikh, till April 20.
“After perusing the case diaries and the FIR, it appears that there is progress in the investigation,” the judge noted in her order on Saturday. She said that the police confiscated Memon’s mobile phone and the investigating officer also collected the complainant’s WhatsApp chats. “…Therefore, this clearly indicates that the accused tried to violate the victim’s modesty by sending such obscene messages,” the judge said.
Extending the period of police custody, she said that with the help of cyber experts in the forensic department, it will be necessary to collect data from the accused’s mobile phone. For this reason, the judge said, the defendant’s detention in police custody was justified.
Assistant Public Prosecutor Aniket Afahad said the prosecution had requested five more days of police remand because the special investigation team needed to secure access to the passwords of the accused’s mobile phones, personal computers and social media accounts, to access their emails, chats and text messages.
In the FIR lodged on April 2, the accused were booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections on charges of sexual harassment, outraging the modesty of women, and using words or gestures to outrage the modesty of women. However, the prosecution said in its remand application that it added Section 78 (Stalking) of the Immigration Act because the accused followed the complainant to her home.
The complaint was filed by a 23-year-old female employee, who alleged that the defendant made physical advances towards her, asked questions about her personal life, embarrassed her about her body, and made her feel uncomfortable and unsafe. One of the accused, Shafi Sheikh, had “proposed” to her and asked her to be his girlfriend “without her consent.”
Police sources said on Friday that the state anti-terrorism squad interrogated Memon and Sheikh for several hours to ascertain whether they were linked to terrorist groups and whether they were receiving foreign funding for their activities.
