Pachauri case: Senior TERI director asked to join interrogation

New Delhi: Delhi Police has issued notice to a top official of TERI asking him to join interrogation in connection with the sexual harassment case over which the green body's Executive Vice Chairman R K Pachauri is in the thick of a legal battle.

The notice was issued to Senior Director of TERI Alok Adholeya, who is currently in the US, asking him to join interrogation as soon as he returns, a police source said.

Similar notices were also issued to TERI Director Sanjai Joshi and area convenor Reena Singh, who are facing allegations of approaching the victim's friend to convince her for an out-of-court settlement of the matter, the source said.

Delhi Police also informed a High Court bench today that it will file the charge sheet in the case within 15 days and the draft report has already been sent to prosecution branch.

In its station report submitted to the bench, police said that Joshi conceded during interrogation that he has indeed talked to victim's friend but maintained that he was never asked by Pachauri to do so.

The status report also said that TERI's area convener Reena Singh was interrogated in her office and she had stated that she had never spoken about any settlement with the victim's friend.

Meanwhile, a senior official said that Delhi Police is yet to receive a complaint from the former TERI employee who came out in public making similar allegations against Pachauri yesterday.

The woman, to whom Pachauri had allegedly made sexual advances more than 10 years ago, also slammed TERI for appointing him to a higher position, Executive Vice Chairman earlier this week.

Giving details of the case, her lawyer Vrinda Grover had said that they had first reported the complaint in February last year with police which did not do anything till date forcing her to come out in public with the charges.

"Pachauri would use the excuse of work assignments to repeatedly call me to his office room, even though there was no real work that he needed to discuss. This made me feel very uncomfortable and I used to try to dodge some meetings or ask my colleagues to go for the meetings," she told a TV channel.