Delhi Police files chargesheet against RK Pachauri in sexual harassment case

Pachauri has been booked under Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354 (A) (sexual harassment), 354 (D) (stalking), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (act or word meant to outrage modesty of women) of the Indian Penal Code.

By Tuesday, the charge sheet filed by police in New Delhi against Mr Pachauri had stretched to more than 1,400 pages.

Pachauri, who denies the claims, resigned past year from both the panel and the institute. “Dr Pachauri has been charged with various misconduct and offences”. The court will take it up for perusal on April 23.

His alleged victim, a researcher at TERI who can not be named for legal reasons, accused Pachauri of sexual harassment soon after she joined the think-tank.

Police have cited around 23 prosecution witnesses and several SMS texts, e-mails and WhatsApp messages exchanged between the accused and victim as evidence to support their case.

His lawyer Ashish Dixit said his client would defend the charges and stressed the case still had a long way to go.

Pachauri’s lawyer Ramesh Gupta said his client was being vilified. The chargesheet states that Pachauri sexually harassed the woman for almost two years after she joined the organisation in September 2013.

Last month his appointment as TERI executive vice-chairman caused outrage, forcing the institute, where he had worked for 35 years, to put him on indefinite leave.

Referring to Pachauri as a “serial sexual harasser”, she said she was compelled to speak out after his “big promotion” and that everyone standing by him “knows the kind of man he is”. He stepped down from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2015. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.