TS apprises SC of BHEL woman official's death

Ramachandrapuram : Telangana government on Wednesday submitted to the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar,that a senior officer has been appointed as investigating officer and a status report has been submitted to it on February 7, in the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) woman finance officer suicide case.

The victim's mother had filed writ petition before the top court on July 5, 2020 seeking a direction to urgently transfer the criminal investigation in the case to the CBI from Telangana police.Her lawyer Alok Srivastavastated that the petitioner's deceased daughter was a bright, young, and intelligent finance professional, having other qualifications.

"She had joined BHEL at the age of 23 in 2009and served BHEL till her last breath with utmost dedication and devotion to her duties. There was not even an iota of complaint against her work or against her mental behaviour during her long association with the BHEL.

The suicide note of the deceased and her last telephonic conversation with her sister, categorically established that her own supervisor and office colleagues subjected her to an extreme level of sexual, physical, and mental harassment and attempted to rape her, due to which she was forced to commit suicideon October 17, 2019," he mentioned in the petition.

The petition claimed that the deceased daughter of the petitioner categorically stated that attempt to rape and repeated sexual harassment by the main accused, Arther Kishore Kumar, and other co-accused persons, had prompted her to commit suicide.

"However, despite this, the Telangana police has not yet arrested the main accused, or any other accused persons and has not conducted their custodial interrogation. On the contrary, the Telangana police had illegally given a clean chit to the accused persons, in their latest report of June 2, 2020, filed before the National Commission of Women," the petition said and sought a CBI inquiry into the entire case to unravel the truth.