STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: The Gauhati High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against an IIT Guwahati professor accused of sexually harassing a woman entrepreneur, holding that no prima facie case under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code was made out.
The case arose from an online complaint received from a woman at North Guwahati Police Station on May 3, 2023, forwarded through the Superintendent of Police, Kamrup. The complainant, a resident of Gandhinagar, Gujarat, alleged that she had been working on a start-up idea under the Atal Innovation Mission and had contacted Dr Vimal Katiyar as a mentor.
According to the complaint, she visited IIT Guwahati on May 18, 2022, to meet Dr Katiyar. As he was busy with preparations for the North East Researchers’ Conclave, he offered to drop her at a friend’s residence in Panbazar while discussing her proposal. She alleged that during the car journey he made inappropriate remarks, held her hand several times and stopped near the Kamakhya Temple, asking her to join her hands in prayer before proceeding, thereby sexually harassing her.
On the basis of her FIR dated February 11, 2023, North Guwahati Police Station registered Case No. 51/2023 under Section 354 IPC on May 5, 2023. After investigation, a charge sheet was filed and the Judicial Magistrate First Class, Kamrup at Amingaon, took cognizance of the offence. The High Court had earlier stayed further proceedings.
Challenging the proceedings, the petitioner contended that the complainant had earlier lodged an official complaint in May 2022 on the same allegations, which led to a departmental inquiry at IIT Guwahati. The inquiry committee, after hearing both sides, exonerated him of wrongdoing, and the decision was communicated to the complainant in November 2022. He argued that the FIR was lodged nearly two and a half months later after she failed to secure a favourable outcome in the departmental proceedings and that it was motivated by vindictiveness after he declined to support her start-up venture.
Examining the ingredients of Section 354 IPC, which criminalizes assault or use of criminal force to outrage a woman’s modesty, the court analyzed the statutory definitions of “force” and “assault”. Justice Sharma observed that for an act to constitute force under Section 349 IPC, there must be motion, change of motion or cessation of motion caused to the person as a whole, and that mere touching would not fall within the ambit of the definition.
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