Inquiry against suspended Thane Jail SP for sexual harassment

January 04, 2017 12:43 am | Updated 12:43 am IST

Mumbai: The State Home Department on Tuesday instructed the Maharashtra Police to initiate a departmental inquiry against suspended Superintendent of Police (Prisons) Hiralal Jadhav, who was booked on sexual harassment charges last year.

Jadhav, who was the superintendent of Thane Central Jail, was accused of sexual harassment by a 31-year-old woman constable posted at the Jail. Jadhav subsequently applied for anticipatory bail in the case and was granted interim relief.

On Tuesday, the Home Department issued an order, a copy of which is with The Hindu , for a five-member committee to be set up to probe the allegations against Jadhav.

The order appoints IPS officer Aswathi Tsering Dorje, currently Additional Commissioner of Police (Local Arms) in Mumbai, as the head of the committee, which also includes ACP (Juvenile Aid Protection Unit) Arvind Sawant, advocate Anupama Pawar, Farida Lambay, the co-founder of NGO Pratham and Aruna Mugutkar, Deputy SP, Yerwada Central Jail, Pune.

The order further instructs the committee to submit a report of its probe to the Home Department within two months.

The Prisons department had earlier conducted an inquiry into the allegations made against Jadhav, which was headed by IGP (Prisons) Rajvardhan Sinha, and a report was duly submitted to the State government by the department.

The complainant had submitted WhatsApp messages and audio clips that Jadhav had allegedy sent to her at the time.

Jadhav also faced similar charges in 2013 when he was the principal of the Jail Officers Training Center in Yerwada. He was suspended for 18 months after an inquiry found him guilty of using abusive language and crude gestures towards newly-recruited women officers.

The writer is a freelance journalist

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