Hyderabad: In 2025, a former corporator from Hyderabad, a woman leader of the Congress party, filed a private complaint in a metropolitan magistrate’s court against seven leaders of the party, including Meenakshi Natarajan. She alleged that these leaders had failed to act on her representation seeking action against another party leader who had allegedly sexually harassed her and threatened her with her life.The corporator, who represented Tarnaka from 2002 to 2007, was earlier with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) where she held the position of joint secretary from 2007 to 2010. She also alleged in her complaint that the Congress leader – Kumbham Shiva Kumar Reddy, from Kumarpet – had once tried to set her house in Tarnaka on fire.The court had issued summons in the case and asked all those whom the corporator had complained against to appear in court. Accordingly, Natarajan and all the other Congress leaders the corporator had named filed counter affidavits. Natarajan’s affidavit was prepared by her law firm and it was submitted to the court in October last year, saying her name was added to it with malafide intent.It is this matter that Natarajan had not mentioned in her election affidavit, submitted to the Returning Officer for the Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh, resulting in the rejection of her application.Natarajan, as the All India Congress Committee in-charge of Telangana, was respondent number four in the corporator’s complaint. The other respondents included Kumbham Shiva Kumar Reddy, his niece Chittem Parnika Reddy, a Congress MLA from Narayanpet, B. Mahesh Kumar Reddy, president of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee; Vakiti Srihari, the Animal Husbandry and Sports Minister (also from Narayanpet), K. Prashant Reddy, president of Narayanpet District Congress Committee, and Chittem Abhijay Reddy, a Congress leader and Shiva Kumar Reddy’s nephew.Shiva Kumar Reddy faces criminal charges, including one registered at Panjagutta police station in Hyderabad on May 7, 2022, and another at Cubbon police station in Bengaluru on June 28, 2023. In both cases, the former woman corporator is the complainant.Two years after filing these complaints, on August 28, 2025, the woman filed the private complaint before the Fourth Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court at Hyderabad, seeking action against the seven leaders, including Natarajan. She claimed they had shielded Shiva Kumar Reddy.Srihari took charge of Shiva Kumar Reddy’s post of District Congress Committee president of Narayanpet after the woman staged a dharna before Panjagutta police station, where the case against the latter was registered.The woman former corporator, who has sought Rs 10 crore compensation for the trauma she went through, alleges in her petition that the Congress leadership did not take action against Shiva Kumar Reddy despite several requests.According to her, when she met Natarajan, she was told the party had suspended Shiva Kumar Reddy, but failed to produce any documentary evidence. She alleged that he was made the Congress’s counting agent in assembly and parliamentary elections even after a court rejected his anticipatory bail application. He had shared the dais with MLA Parnika Reddy at a meeting held to distribute cheques to farmers, which she said brought to the attention of Deepadas Munshi, Natarajan’s predecessor as the Congesss in-charge of Telangana.The woman also said that Munshi summoned Parnika Reddy and Shiva Kumar Reddy to the party office in Hyderabad to sort out the issue in the presence of State Congress president Mahesh Kumar Goud. Srihari, the district Congress president at the time, was also consulted.Thereafter, she appealed to the court to take cognisance against all the respondents and direct them to compensate her by Rs 10 crore. The court summoned Natarajan and the others, and all of them responded by filing affidavits. But when Natarajan did not mention this in her election affidavit, the Congress was hoping for her victory as the party had numbers.She said she made representations to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka to have Shiva Kumar Reddy arrested after he threatened her with her life, but his political influence saved him. She alleged being threatened and asked to withdraw the court case. In the meantime, a protection order given to her by a court in Bengaluru lapsed.In her reply to the court’s summons, Natarajan said the woman filed the case against her and others with mala fide intent. She said she had never met nor interacted with Shiva Kumar Reddy in her personal capacity and that no specific criminal act had been attributed to herself. She prayed that the case against her be dismissed as she could not be held liable for the alleged actions of Shiva Kumar Reddy.The Congress party and Natarajan have opposed the rejection of her nomination to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh, where the party had a strong chance of succeeding in its bid.