Sexual harassment charges against RK Pachauri

RK Pachauri, Padma Vibhusan awardee and director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), could be India’s version of Captain Planet, giving advice on how the planet is dying and how we need to save it. As Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he collected the Nobel Prize when the IPCC won it in 2007. On 24 Februay, he stepped down as IPCC chairman, ending 13 years in charge of the group, under rather unsavoury circumstances.

Pachauri is accused of sexual harassment in the office space by a 29-year-old research associate at the institute. He reportedly sent, beginning September 2013, WhatsApp messages, texts and emails which suggested inappropriate and persistent sexual advances. He allegedly embraced her once and attempted to kiss her. In one alleged exchange between the two, a ‘spurned lover’ act seems apparent. ‘Please you are not to grab me and or kiss me,’ the lady’s text message to him goes, to which his reported reply is: ‘I wish you would see the difference between something tender and loving and something crass and vulgar. So I shall slink away and withdraw.’

While the 74-year-old Pachauri has denied all wrong-doings, with his lawyer claiming the allegations to be “false, baseless and motivated”, Harvard University withdrew an invitation for its India Conference that was extended to him, following the FIR lodged against him. TERI, which he has headed for over three decades now, has also announced that Pachauri had ‘proceeded on leave for the time being’. Pachauri got admitted to a Delhi hospital a day before his bail hearing. He has been granted interim relief till 26 February.

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