Sexual harassment: Future complaints to attract strict punishment, respondents warned

Woman ‘harassed, assaulted on turning down relationship proposal’.

FAISALABAD:

Respondents in a sexual harassment plea, including a station house officer, were warned on Wednesday of strict action if another complaint was received against them in future.

Huma Bibi had submitted through her counsel Irum Shehzadi that her supervisor at a hosiery manufacturing unit, Muhammad Usman, and his two accomplices were harassing her ever since she turned down Usman’s proposal for a relationship.

In her plea submitted under Section 22-A and 22-B of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), the woman alleged that Usman and his accomplices had assaulted her.

She said the suspects later threatened her to develop illicit relations with them otherwise they would malign her in public. She said she had contracted marriage with one Muhammad Javaid, three months ago, after getting a divorce from her first husband.

She said she feared the suspects would provoke her husband against her and remained silent about the matter.

However, she added, the suspects continued harassing her on the job so she was left with no option but to seek legal assistence.

She accused the Mansurabad SHO of supporting the suspects and threatening to implicate her forged cases.

On Wednesday, the respondents pledged in front of additional sessions judge Abdur Rehman Bodla that they would not interfere in any of the complainant’s matters.

The judge disposed of the petition after warning the respondents that strict action would be taken against them in case of a similar complaint in future.

The complainant told The Express Tribune that she was satisfied with the decision.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2011.