It was a preliminary report, based on an independent in-house judicial inquiry by a retired judge, which the West Bengal Governor, C.V. Ananda Bose's office released on Saturday. IANS has an accessed copy of the report, which has found allegations of 'sexual harassment' levelled by a lady contractual employee of Raj Bhavan against the Governor as baseless.
Enquiry conducted by Retired District Judge D. Ramabathiran, who termed the allegations of incidents happened on April 24 and May 2 at the Raj Bhavan, as reported by the complainant, as baseless accusations.
During the inquiry, the retired judge questioned eight staffers of the Raj Bhavan, including Major Nikhil Kumar, ADC to Governor, and other staff, namely Manish Joshi, Kaveri Kar, Saima Begum, Munna Chowdhury, Kusum Chettri, Sant Kumar Lal, and Sandeep Kumar Singh.
The report mentioned that on May 2, the day when the police complaint against the Governor was lodged by the contractual staff, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was staying at the Raj Bhavan, accompanied by members of the Special Protection Group, who had already been stationed in Kolkata.
The probe expressed suspicion that such incidents could have occurred on that day.
The probe report also found that no woman employee of the Raj Bhavan came up with such allegations against the Governor.
Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh rubbished the internal report as a cover-up, terming it an attempt by the governor to clear himself through an inquiry that was initiated by himself. Ghosh also asked what the logic was behind handing over the responsibility of probe to a retired district judge from a southern state.
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