NEW DELHI: Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Monday said it was the initiatives taken by her ministry that had made “women confident enough to come out and reveal their experiences of having been harassed sexually at some point in their lives through the ongoing MeToo campaign.”
Recently, following actress Tanushree Dutta’s allegations against veteran actor Nana Patekar, hundreds of women have come out on social media to name and shame celebrities and male colleagues, sharing the details of harassment and behaviour experienced by them through the Me Too campaign.
“Over the last four and a half years, we have taken a number of measures to make women safe everywhere and have given them ample avenues to report if there is something wrong happening with them,” she told TNIE.
“We first started the IAmTrolled campaign encouraging women to come to us with complaints of being abused or harassed online and then shared our mail id with them to report any case of sexual harassment following which over 23,000 complaints were received and each one was addressed to the extent possible,” Gandhi said.
“Then we made it mandatory for companies to provide details of cases addressed by Internal Complaints Committee (all companies are mandated to have ICCs led by a senior woman employee to address sexual harassment cases) in their annual reports through the Corporate Affairs Ministry,’ Gandhi said.
“I have also asked the National Commission for Women to take appropriate action in all individual cases. All these interventions have empowered the women to come out and expose their harassers.”
In a letter written to the Union Law Ministry she has also urged that some provisions in the existing laws be changed to allow victims to report cases of child sex abuse under Prevention of Children against Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act at any age.
At present, the period of limitation allows any victim to report cases only within three years.
The truth remains the same, says Nana Patekar
MUMBAI: Veteran actor Nana Patekar, who has been accused of sexual harassment by Tanushree Dutta, on Monday refuted all charges levelled against him. “My lawyers have asked me not to speak about the issue with the media. We have sent a legal notice to Tanushree Dutta and I won’t be able to comment on the case till the procedure is complete. I am saying what I said 10 years back, the truth doesn’t change,” Patekar told the media gathered outside his residence after he cancelled his press conference at the least minute earlier in the day.