New Delhi: In a shocking revelation, a complainant against RK Pachauri has said that the former director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) threatened her after seeing her talking to a male colleague in 2014.
Pachauri, who is facing charges of sexual harassment, told me that "if you were ever to get a boyfriend, I will castrate him", said the complainant.
According to an Economic Times report, Pachauri told this to her while they were boarding a flight at Los Cabos in Mexico after a climate change summit.
During an official trip to Paris in October 2013, Pachauri kissed her despite her having shown reluctance to it.
In the statement she recorded before a judicial magistrate in February last year, the complainant said she was also asked by Pachauri to read a salacious novel penned by him, 'Return to Almora', in August 2013. However, she had refused to do so.
On February 12, TERI asked its executive vice chairman RK Pachauri to proceed on indefinite leave, a move the women activists said "meant nothing".
The Energy and Resources Institute's move came in the face of flak from various quarters over making him the executive vice chairman, the first ever in TERI.
Pachauri was accused of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female colleague in 2015.
Meanwhile, TERI university acting vice chancellor Rajiv Seth told IANS that varsity vice chancellor Leena Srivastava, on a sabbatical since August 2015, is likely to rejoin soon.
The university will hold its convocation on March 7.
After sexual harassment charge, Pachauri stepped down as chairperson of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February last year and proceeded on leave from TERI where he was the director general.
Later, Pachauri was removed as TERI head in July and Ajay Mathur appointed in his place. In November, the woman researcher who accused him of sexual harassment quit her job at TERI, alleging she was treated badly. TERI denied the charge.
Pachauri was later appointed the executive vice chairman.
Soon after, another woman employee of the organisation also levied similar charges against him and called him a "serial sexual harasser".
(With IANS inputs)
