KOCHI: The police investigation into the sexual harassment complaint against Jose K Peter while he was the managing director of the Thodupuzha Urban Cooperative Bank Ltd (TUBCL) seems to be going nowhere, with the family of the survivor fearing attempts to sabotage the probe.
The complaint was filed by a senior woman employee of the bank and Jose was suspended in June, following which he quit the organisation after an internal probe found truth in the allegations. He was accused of sexually harassing the employee and then intimidating her by reading out a confidential complaint submitted by her to the chairman at a meeting of managerial-level staff.
Explaining the reasons for the sabotage fear, sources close to the survivor said she was summoned to the police station by sub inspector Santhosh K S on November 24 to sign a document to be filed in the court.
In a letter to ADGP Manoj Abraham, the woman narrated the ordeal she faced at the police station. “They asked me to sign in a register kept upstairs saying ‘after signing you can come down and get the copy of the notice’. So, I went upstairs and signed and came back to the officer for the receipt of the notice. He (SI Santhosh) changed his stand and said that another officer also needed to sign, and once it’s done, he would send the notice,” said the woman’s letter.
The SI failed to give her the notice even after two days. So, on November 27, she went to the station, accompanied by her lawyer. There, in the notice, she found the police had rejected the charges. Further, it is learnt that at a bank board meeting on November 22, two days before the woman was asked to appear at the police station, Joseph P P, an accomplice of Jose, distributed a note among all the directors saying that the police inquiry on the case was over and the complaint would be rejected.
“The fact that he came to know that the complaint was going to be rejected well before I was informed proves that he (Jose Peter) was colluding with the police,” said the survivor’s letter to the ADGP.
When TNIE contacted SI Santhosh for comments, he denied that the probe was over. “The case is not closed. We have not rejected the case,” he said.
Sources close to the survivor said they suspect a concerted effort to torpedo the probe. “There are no female officers in the police team probing the case now. Initially, there was one woman officer but she was later removed. The woman officer was sympathetic to the survivor. That could be a reason for her removal,” said a source.
Also, no second statement or clarifications were taken from the survivor and none of the witnesses named in the initial statement interviewed, the sources said. The bank’s internal committee which looked into the harassment complaint found there were prima facie substance in the allegations.
“By reading the sexual harassment complaint in public, Jose outraged the modesty of the woman. The police never looked into these facts, they were never interested to probe the case related to the outraging of the modesty of the survivor by the MD, and they did not question anyone about it,” said a family member of the survivor.