This is what Nisha Bhatia, a Director in RAW’s training institute in Gurgaon, said from her bed in the trauma centre of the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital where she was admitted this afternoon after she consumed what doctors said was a “half-inch brick” of rat poison at the Prime Minister’s Office.
This comes a month after Bhatia wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on what she alleged was her sexual harassment by the top brass of the country’s premier overseas intelligence agency.
Her two-page letter with detailed annexures, obtained by The Indian Express, was a list of complaints of alleged sexual harassment and inaction by RAW higher-ups, including a Joint Secretary-level officer.
Bhatia ended her letter saying: “I would rather die than live life like a ‘living dead.’ I would do it right in front of you, Sir.”
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.”
... contd.
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