Electronics City

FIR

Infosys

Kannada

Indiranagar

Woman has to go to top cop for action against PG run by the relative of senior police officerA 29-year-old woman software engineer, who was sexually harassed and threatened by a cook at her paying guest accommodation, had a further harrowing time to get a case registered as the owner of the paying guest is the relative of a senior police officer. Thepolice heard her complaint and told her that they would file a non-cognisable report. She insisted that she wants anregistered and argued with the police. Finally, she had to seek the help of city police commissioner Bhaskar Rao, who directed the divisional DCP to look into the matter and register an FIR.The techie has been working within Electronics City since 2010. She has been staying at one AVS ladies paying guest in Konappana Agrahara for the last four months. The establishment accommodates around 150 women and has a cook and a helper. All the tenants get three meals from the place.“One has to keep in the good books of our cook Saharam Sangma, a 29-year-old man, who has been the cook at the PG for over four years. If a woman does not talk to him or have a good rapport with him, she would be served bad food and then bullied and abused,” the woman told Mirror.She said she was keeping her distance with him anyway. The woman came to know that he used to pass lewd comments about her to other girls.“I had finished work on Friday, and had gone to the dining room of the PG around 9 pm when Sangma was chatting with a few women who were having dinner. I sat for dinner and had kept my water bottle next to me. Sangma picked up the bottle and was pretending to beat one of the women with it, so I objected and asked him to put the bottle back. Sangma got furious and slammed the bottle on the table,” she said.She questioned Sangma and a heated row followed. An irked Sangma is said to have brought a huge ladle and threatened to smash the woman’s head with that.“I went and complained to the PG owner, a woman, but she took the cook’s side and said he has been working there for the past four years and she couldn’t even imagine running a PG without a cook for so many women guests,” the woman said.So she went to the Electronics City police station, but the police said it was a trivial issue and that they would file a Non-Cognisable Report (NCR). “The police then did their inquiries and learnt that the owner of the PG was a relative of senior police officer Prakash Reddy,” she said, as she overheard one of the policemen talk to his senior in. By this time, the cops had brought both Sangma and the PG owner to the station.The woman told the policemen that she would escalate the matter to senior police officials if an FIR is not registered. They asked her to give them a day. The cops assured her that Sangma would be kept at the station through the night.The woman had to stay with a friend at her PG inthat night. When she reached the station the next morning, Sangma had been let off. She insisted that he be called to the station. When Sangma arrived in a car, she took photographs of him on her mobile which irked the women constables at the station. The constables charged at her and abused her for clicking pictures of the accused.She then came to the city police commissioner’s office on Infantry Road and gave her petition to police commissioner Bhaskar Rao, who directed the divisional South East DCP Isha Pant to look into the matter. With the DCP’s intervention, she has managed to get an FIR registered and the police have ooked Sangma for sexual harassment and criminal intimidation.