THE former chair of a UN panel of climate scientists, Rajendra K. Pachauri, was charged on Tuesday (March 1) with stalking, intimidating and sexually harassing a woman who worked at a think-tank he headed for more than 30 years, Indian police said.
Pachauri, 75, was accused in February last year of sexual harassment by a researcher working at Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) where Pachauri was director general.
Pachauri, who quit as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a year ago, denies the charges.
After a year-long investigation into the allegations, which has been closely followed by the Indian media, police said they had sufficient evidence to file charges.
"A chargesheet was filed today in the Metropolitan Magistrate court of Shivani Chauhan in Saket," said a senior Delhi police official connected to the investigation.
"Dr Pachauri has been charged with various misconduct and offences," the official, who declined to be named, told reporters.
The official said the charges included stalking, sexual harassment, "outraging the modesty of a woman" and criminal intimidation.
The most serious charges – sexual harassment and stalking – carry a maximum jail term of three years under Indian law.
The chargesheet ran to more than 1,000 pages and referred to SMS, Whatsapp and email correspondence between Pachauri and the researcher, who was 29 at the time the complaint was filed.
The chargesheet also included the testimonies of 25 witnesses, many of them past or present employees at TERI, the police official added.
Pachauri's lawyer Ramesh Gupta said his client was being vilified. He said Pachauri could not be arrested because he had been granted anticipatory bail by a court which means police cannot take him into custody for now.
The court will convene on April 23 to decide whether to extend the anticipatory bail or withdraw it, Gupta said.
