President of Thiruvananthapuram Press Club M Radhakrishnan will be probed over a complaint of allegedly harassing a young woman while she was riding her scooter in the capital city earlier this month. In the complaint given by the woman, it is said that she was chased by a person on a motorbike, who then verbally abused her and made vulgar gestures at her. The incident happened, according to the complaint, between 7.45 and 8pm on February 3, near the AKG centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
The Cantonment Police has filed a First Information Report, in which the accused is mentioned as an identifiable person, as stated by the complainant. “It is after investigations and examining CCTV visuals that we identified the motorbike as Radhakrishnan’s. He has admitted that there was a verbal argument between him and the woman, but denied there being any use of abusive language or gestures,” a police officer at the station told TNM.
The police will alter the FIR based on their findings, and the sections 354 D (offence of stalking) and 509 (offence of insulting modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) will likely be added to it. However, it all depends on the findings, and no witnesses have yet come forward, the police said.
Radhakrishnan has earlier been accused in a case of moral policing and harassment, when he barged into the house of a woman colleague with other men, slapped a guest of the house and humiliated the woman in front of her little children. He was arrested and sacked from the Malayalam daily where he had worked as a proofreader, but continued in the position of Press Club Secretary, which he held at the time. Women journalists in Thiruvananthapuram then held protests against Radhakrishnan and marched to the Press Club demanding his resignation, after which he was briefly expelled. But in the next elections, he was voted President and continues in that position.
Read: Kerala journos vote a harasser to victory, what were they thinking?