When contacted by The Indian Express, Chaturvedi said: “We have found her allegations unfounded and baseless. She was angling for a foreign posting which was not given to her which is probably behind all this.”

But over the past six months, Bhatia has sent representations to the Prime Minister, the National Security Advisor and on July 24, to the National Commission for Women (NCW). Her meetings with the NSA M K Narayanan and Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrashekhar resulted in an internal inquiry being ordered under Supreme Court guidelines and a request to her to withdraw her resignation which she submitted on November 1, 2007.

The Indian Express first published details of the sexual harassment case (June 14, 2008) but the result of the inquiry was evident from letters she wrote to Shashi Prabha, who headed the inquiry, on December 21.

In it she wrote, “Inquiries on sexual harassment lead nowhere as it becomes a ‘who said what’ battle at the end of which the male-dominated system successfully ‘fixes’ the victim.”

She also informed Shashi Prabha that she had “attempted to strip” outside 2, Tughlak lane, the residence of Ashok Chaturvedi on December 20.

To Girija Vyas, the Chairperson of the NCW, she wrote: “...several inquiries, with no legal status, have been constituted within the department by Shri Ashok Chaturvedi — not to investigate my complaint but to invite me to ‘prove my case.’ I have failed to understand how I could possibly ‘prove’ things that happened in one-on-one meetings.”

... contd.