January 09, 2019:

Almost a month after a woman employee at Vivo India, a phone manufacturing company in Greater Noida, lodged a complaint with the police regarding sexual harassment by four male colleagues, two of them were arrested on Tuesday morning.

Suraj Bahuguna, a resident of Chamba town in Tehri Garhwal district in Uttarakhand and Kishan Chand, a native of Mirzapur village in Ballabhgarh, Haryana, were arrested by a team of Eco Tech 1 police station on Tuesday morning outside their firm’s main gate in Techzone, IT Park in Greater Noida. Both Bahuguna and Chand work in the mobile manufacturing unit along with the victim.

The victim had first approached the police on Dec 10 regarding a complaint of sexual harassment against her colleagues.

After probing the matter, police had filed a case against five persons of the mobile company, including the HR manager on Dec 20 for allegedly not taking any action when the victim had approached him with the complaint.

According to police, an initial probe revealed that Bahuguna typed lewd comments on the Facebook timeline of the female employee whereas Kishan Chand had verbally abused her.

“We have arrested the accused under Indian penal code section 506 and 504 for intentional insult and criminal intimidation and also under section 67 of the IT act. Bahuguna had typed lewd comments and later Chand, who is her boss, had mocked her in the office later,” said Farmood Ali Pundir, station house officer, Eco Tech 1 police station.

After initial investigations, police registered an FIR in the matter and have written a letter to the mobile company to provide details of all employees who are member of the committee handling matters pertaining to sexual harassment at workplace. Police have also asked the company to inform if there was a woman member on the committee or not.

According to police, the role of the other two employees named in the FIR, is yet to be ascertained.

“Their role is being probed as of now and due action will be taken as per procedure,” added Pundir.

In a statement released to the media, a spokesperson of Vivo India said, “The matter is already with our Internal Complaints Committee for further investigation and we are awaiting the committee’s report. The two individuals were called by the police authorities for their statements. We at Vivo have always co-operated with authorities and will continue to extend our full support in this investigation. (sic)”

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