Nashik: The court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate SV Lad on Friday ordered till April 29 a custodial remand of four TCS Nashik employees, who are facing charges of sexual harassment and religious coercion in a complaint lodged by one of their male co-workers in the company. This case is among the total nine cases of sexual offences and religious coercion being probed by a special investigation team (SIT) of Nashik police.On Thursday, the SIT had secured custody of these four employees from the Nashik Road Central Prison where they were lodged in court custody in another case. An SIT team produced them before ACJM Lad and moved an application through public prosecutor Kiran Bendbhar seeking their remand in police custody for 10 days. The court, however, preferred to remand them in police custody till April 29.Bendbhar said, “The 35-year-old complainant has accused the four employees of consistently targeting him at the workplace and hurting his religious sentiments.”It is the complainant’s case that the accused forced him to read their holy book, wear a religious headgear and eat non-veg food and would often pass disparaging remarks against his religious faith. They would also pass lewd comments against women co-workers in the company and make sexually coloured remarks against his wife, the complainant alleged.Police cited the complaint and said the accused took the complainant to different places, including hotels, in two different cars where he was fed ‘shir kurma’ following which he started feeling dizzy. They also filmed a video of the complainant wearing the headgear and posted the video on a social media group, the complainant alleged.The prosecutor submitted that the police needed to conduct an in-depth investigation into allegations against the accused people by taking them to the places they visited along with the complainant and subjected him to religious coercion through various acts. The police also needed to recover the two cars used in the alleged crime, recover the cellphone of one of the accused and conduct panchanama of the places visited. Advocates Baba Sayyad and Rahul Kasliwal, representing the accused, submitted that the police were needlessly seeking custodial remand on pretexts like cracking mobile phone codes, recovery of vehicles and other reasons. “The cracking of mobile phone codes is an old reason the police have been putting forth, and the cars can also be taken up by the police anytime for which remand is not required,” said Kasliwal.
