Letter to Hoot: the Statesman sexual harassment case

BY rina mukherji| IN Opinion | 31/08/2003

To suggest that my complaint is false is a comment on the West Bengal State Commission for Women, which does not accept any case unless a thorough screening is done.

This is in response to the letter you have published ostensibly from staffers of The Statesman who are extremely angry at my "allegations" against Ishan Joshi.

Not that I am surprised at the letter bring sent The Hoot, close on the heels of you writing about the matter. I do not wish to comment on it, and the signatories, knowing full well that the management is easily capable of arm-twisting its employees to sign on a pre-drafted document, especially when their employment and livelihood is at stake.

I stand by every word I have written, and shall always do so. To suggest that my complaint is false is a comment on the West Bengal State Commission for Women, which does not accept any case unless a thorough screening is done. The fact that it has taken up my case and is pursuing the matter since the past eight months is self-explanatory.

I only wish to comment on what has been said about colleagues standing by and not intervening to stop the harassment I was undergoing. Your readers are by now familiar about what happened in the Ambarish Mishra case, where a minor girl was raped in full view of a whole lot of spectators, and no one did anything to stop the heinous act.

Could I expect any one to bother to intervene when someone like me, who was neither illiterate nor a minor, was being pawed, when sticking out their necks would mean my colleagues losing their jobs?

And then, this was no rape!

Rina Mukherji

Calcutta

August 30, 2003

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