Mumbai: At a time when Binoy Jacob, the former vice president of Air India-SATS, has come under the scanner in the sensational gold smuggling case in Kerala, a former junior employee has accused the premier ground and cargo handling agency of protecting him in a sexual harassment complaint filed by her in 2016.The AI-SATS, a joint venture between the Central government-owned Air India Limited and SATS Limited, handles the ground and cargo at airports. The Air India chairman is the ex-officio chairman of AI-SATS.Merin Mathew, a former employee of AI-SATS, had filed a police complaint against Jacob for sexual harassment in 2016 after the Internal Complaints Committee – set up by her employer to handle her complaint – had rejected her allegations against the top official. Mathew said, based on the ICC report, AI-SATS had instead initiated a disciplinary inquiry against her, alleging that she had instigated the staff against the management.“When I learned that this was to happen to me, I resigned. My resignation was accepted in October 2017. In the year between the release of the ICC report and my resignation, I was ostracised by most of my colleagues,” she told The Wire.When Mathew had lodged the complaint against Jacob with the AI-SATS management in 2016, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered a case against him under the Prevention of Corruption Act for cheating the Airports Authority of India and causing a huge financial loss to the government. Later though, the CBI gave him a clean chit in that case.Prior to that, in 2006, Jacob was an accused in a visa fraud case probed by the Kerala crime branch. “He was facing trial in this case when he was appointed by AI-SATS. Without disclosing this criminal case against him, he obtained police clearance certificate from Kottayam. He further obtained Airport Entry Permit from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security,” a top state police source stated. The case was settled in the Delhi high court on April 1, 2014 after Jacob paid a sum of Rs 1,25,000 that he was accused of swindling from the aggrieved persons.Mathew, relating her complaint against Jacob and the ongoing police case, claimed that working in AI-SATS “was a nightmare then”.“When I joined the organisation as an administrative officer in 2015, I immediately discovered that there did not appear to be any functioning of ‘due process’. I had not got an offer letter. My cost to company (full salary and benefits) had been discussed with me, but had not been confirmed since there was no offer letter issued to me. Everything appeared to depend on an evaluation by the organisation’s vice president Binoy Jacob. This ‘evaluation’, I soon learned, was sexual harassment,” Mathew told The Wire.Also read: ‘I Was Sexually Harassed By a Senior Advisor to the Maldives President. This is My Story.’An accused in the present gold smuggling case, Swapna (Swapnaprabha) Suresh, who is now in police custody, was appointed by AI-SATS during Jacob’s tenure. The case has come to light after the customs department seized 30 kg of gold from diplomatic baggage belonging to the United Arab Emirates consulate in Thiruvananthapuram.Mathew has been widely quoted in the state’s media reports claiming that Jacob had put pressure on the staff then to smuggle in gold into the country, calling it to have an “underworld-like environment” at that time. She has also said that not only Swapna but several persons were appointed by AI-SATS in less than meritorious way.As per media reports, NIA has said that it would call some senior AI-SATS officials for interrogation.Binoy Jacob.On July 16, Jacob was asked to leave his present job by the ground handling agency Bhadra International following the allegations against him in the case.While the investigation in the present case is on, Mathew has stated to The Wire that after Jacob’s sexual advances to her in 2016, she didn’t know how to take action as she knew nothing about the Sexual Harassment Act of 2013 and its rule that all workplaces should have an ICC for sexual harassment. “I had no faith in the then human resources (HR) manager, who I knew to be a close friend of the perpetrator. So I sent my complaint of sexual harassment to the then assistant vice president of AI-SATS, Gerald Lim, who forwarded it to Mike Chew, the then CEO, on July 2, 2016,” she said.Mathew’s email to Lim had said:“Gerald, this job is very important to me and the salary that I get is what helps me run my family of two kids. Else I would have resigned at the first instance forgetting the Rs 25,000 I furnished as a bond during joining however hard it was for me to arrange that money. I feel I am being exploited and harassed because I didn’t bend to the whims and fancies of one person (sic).”‘Lose weight or our tummies will touch’When the company received her complaint, it did not have an ICC – a clear violation of the Sexual Harassment Act of 2013. This is evident from the report that Mathew received from them after her case was heard, which stated that they formed an ICC on July 8, 2016, after they received her complaint.Mathew said the ICC was based in Delhi. It is not clear why there was no ICC for the Thiruvananthapuram office and why one was not formed there after Mathew’s complaint. An email to Valerian Ferreira, head of HR at AI-SATS, which raised questions about the sexual harassment case, was not answered.Also read: Scared Workers at Amma Canteens Allege Sexual Harassment, Poor Working ConditionsSheeba Prathap, who is currently the HR manager at AI-SATS in Thiruvananthapuram, refused to answer questions regarding the case and the ICC.Even Binoy Jacob, when contacted by The Wire, refused to comment, stating that he no longer works at AI-SATS.The ICC report says the committee was formed on July 8, 2016 after an employee made a complaint of sexual harassment on July 2, 2016.According to Mathew, from that point onwards, the work environment became doubly hostile for her. As per the rules of the Sexual Harassment Act of 2013, the ICC should convene at the complainant’s workplace and all procedures should be designed to make the process as easy as possible for the complainant. However, the management summoned Mathew to Delhi for a hearing.“When I refused to go to Delhi, they sent a team from Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram. Four hearings were held in Thiruvananthapuram – on July 11, 28 and 29, 2016, and August 23, 2016. Later, another hearing was held in Gurugram on September 14, 2016, and one in Delhi on September 16, 2016.”She added, “The Gurugram and Delhi hearings happened without me being present. They convened and conducted interviews via phone calls. I got to know of this when I received the ICC report stating the details.”Mathew was asked during her hearing if she would like to be transferred to another department or would like to go on leave. She went on leave for three months.She recalled that during the first ICC hearing on July 11, she was asked to formally submit her complaint to the ICC. She did so on July 27, 2016, whereupon she went for the ICC hearings on July 27 and 28.Mathew’s formal complaint to the ICC stated that “It is against great personal cost that I am seeking justice from the ICC, not just for myself, but for all women and men who have been harassed by this man.”“He made repeated comments on female subordinates’ bodies, weight and clothes. He would ask them to wear certain clothes, tell them to lose weight, guess their vital statistics,” Mathew told The Wire. Her complaint to the ICC also mentioned a detailed account of a meeting where she was asked to be present, alone, by Jacob at a five star hotel where she claimed that she was asked about her vital statistics too.“I complained that once, after asking my weight, Jacob had said I had to reduce or else our tummies would touch.”She had stated to the ICC:“…In the beginning I ignored his (Binoy Jacob’s) solicitation for sexual favours and lewd remarks about my ‘vital statistics’ because a common family friend had introduced me to Mr Binoy, who had then given me the job. Despite this, when the VP persistently kept asking me to go away with him at every occasion he got, I stopped ignoring it and said ‘No’, explicitly but politely. Once, he even apologised for an inappropriate request to go to Thekkady with him. I thought it may end with this but unfortunately not. He solicited me again in the cabin a few days later. Taken aback that he was persisting, I told him angrily that I was not going anywhere with him and that he should maintain the dignity of a VP. He asked me whether I knew to whom I was speaking, implicitly threatening me about his power over matters related to my employment. Since then, he stopped his sexual harassment but has gone out of his way to create a very offensive and intimidating environment for me in the workplace and elsewhere.”After the ICC hearings, Mathew was transferred from the corporate city office to the airport office. But she refused to join the airport office and continued to go to the city office. They did not object, but she said she was not given the computer she required for work.“However, I continued to go to the city office and sit at my desk without a computer for one week, after which I was sent from my original department (HR) to the learning and development department in the adjacent room, where I was given fewer responsibilities.”Also read: Of Men Like Mice: The Legal System’s Historic Apathy Towards Gender JusticeImportantly, Mathew had held the post that Swapna Suresh, the accused in the gold smuggling case, had resigned from, after L.S. Sibu, an officer at AI-SATS, had complained to the CBI and the Central Vigilance Commission about irregularities in the contract with the ground handling agency. As mentioned earlier, the CBI had named Jacob, and also finance manager P.K. Anandan, as suspects in the case then. Later, Swapna had accused Sibu of sexual harassment because of which he was transferred to Hyderabad.Investigating a complaint filed by Sibu in 2016, the state crime branch had but found evidence of involvement of Swapna Suresh in forging signatures of 16 female employees of AI-SATS to implicate him in the sexual harassment case. By then, the Crime Branch had reportedly arraigned Jacob as the first accused in that case.According to a top source at the state crime branch investigating the case, the crime branch “faced resistance from AI-SATS ICC when it was summoned in the case and it was through a court order that they were questioned. Both Jacob and Swapna Suresh were questioned in the case too apart from the ICC.” The source said, “The investigation is ongoing and Jacob, who procured anticipatory bail in the case, is to be questioned again.”Mathew said, “The AI-SATS knew that Jacob was an accused in the CBI case then. The ICC report itself mentions the CBI raid that had happened in connection with that case. Even without the CBI probe, the Kerala crime branch had records of Jacob as the main accused in a visa fraud case from 2006. But all these years later, Jacob continued to hold his position at AI-SATS. He frequently told me and other employees then that he was highly influential.”Mathew was not the only female employee to face sexual harassment at AI-SATS. She mentioned another female employee who had accused Jacob of sexual harassment while deposing as a witness for Mathew before the ICC.“The HR manager threatened and intimidated her in the presence of Binoy Jacob. The two of them had made it clear to her that if she testified against Jacob and in my favour, she would face consequences. However, she deposed before the ICC against Jacob in my case and in one of the hearings, she also submitted a written complaint of sexual harassment against Jacob,” Mathew stated.The ICC, though, did not take up this woman’s case. She then filed a police complaint which went to court, but did not pursue it. “Her co-workers had started becoming more and more hostile towards her, so she gave up,” claimed Mathew. The Wire attempted to get in touch with this woman, but was not able to do so.Mathew said the woman received two show cause notices regarding the clothes she wore to work and was also transferred from the corporate city office to the airport office after the ICC report came out. “By then, she had withdrawn her police case against Jacob,” she added.Also read: The Virus of Misogyny Went from Bollywood to #BoislockerroomMathew’s complaint also mentioned a complaint of sexual harassment that had been filed with the HR department in 2013 when Jacob was an assistant vice president. That complaint had detailed late night calls, inappropriate invitations to hotels and the harassment of candidates during job interviews. “Despite the details in this complaint, Jacob was later made vice president of the organisation,” Mathew pointed out.Mathew also said that some female colleagues who deposed before the ICC in her case described her clothes and sitting postures in the office as ‘inappropriate’. “I was transferred without reason and my probation period was extended. I was not given the salary I was promised. Most of the people who heard about my complaint wondered why I was doing it when I had ‘not even been raped’,” she told The Wire.The ICC report itself had a detailed description of Mathew’s personal life, where special emphasis was laid on the fact that she is a single mother. During the hearing, Mathew was asked about her marital status. When she said she was divorced, she was asked if it was she or her husband who had initiated the divorce proceedings. When she asked the relevance of the question, she was asked to answer it.Mathew said she was not allowed to cross question Jacob or his witnesses. “I only learnt who Jacob’s witnesses were when I received the ICC report on October 13, 2016, which said that sexual harassment had not taken place.” The report said: “There are no evidences in the form of CCTV footage, recordings or witnesses which are available to prove the claims of sexual harassment.”“That was because there were no CCTV cameras in or near the places I was sexually harassed.” She also claimed that CCTV cameras were installed in and around the office only after her original complaint, though The Wire couldn’t independently verify this.The report also said that though there might have been procedural lapses on the part of HR department, they could not be attributed to Binoy Jacob. Mathew’s screenshots of Jacob apologising to her via WhatsApp messages for having asked her to go with him on ‘tours’ and repeatedly asking her if she was ‘free’ to tour with him were not considered evidence. Neither were the statements of co-workers to whom she had spoken about the harassment she was facing.Jacob, in his statement to the ICC, questioned Mathew’s character. He asked why she had waited nine months to file a complaint. He also said that he had received complaints about the clothes Mathew’s colleague who filed the other complaint wore. He accused Mathew of instigating the second woman to file a complaint against him. He also accused her of spending time with a male employee.Based on the ICC report, AI-SATS initiated a disciplinary inquiry against Mathew for instigating the staff against the management, following which Mathew put in her papers.Mathew challenged the ICC report in the Kerala high court while being an AI-SATS employee. “I was determined to fight for justice. Someone had to do it. I wanted to know where this thing called neethi (justice) was,” she told The Wire.A search for justiceThe high court directed her to the Central Government Industrial Tribunal (CGIT), as it was the appellate authority. When she approached the CGIT, her appeal was challenged in court and she was told that the real appellate authority was the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central) and Deputy Labour Commissioner (Central).Before she had received the ICC report, she had gone to the Museum police station in Thiruvananthapuram to lodge a complaint along with the second woman. Mathew also wrote to the Office of the District Social Justice, Thiruvananthapuram, who said that even though the implementation of the Sexual Harassment Act 2013 was their responsibility, since AI-SATS came under the central government, they could not intervene.The social justice department said the complainants had to approach the Central government for justice.Mathew’s last remaining hope was the complaint she had lodged with the police. “The police were reluctant to accept the case. I met Director General of Police (DGP) Loknath Behera, who incidentally, is also accused of being one of Swapna Suresh’s acquaintances,” she said.“Even without reading my complaint, he asked me, ‘What proof do you have?’” Mathew recalled. She asked him to read the complaint and spoke about the Sexual Harassment Act which makes it a point that emphasis must not be laid on ‘proof’ of sexual harassment.Mathew thereafter approached Sakhi, an NGO that supports women. When members of Sakhi met the DGP, he repeated even to them that Mathew was ‘lying’.Dr Gita Gopal, former lead evaluation expert, World Bank, who was also the honorary advisor, gender and protection, of the government of Kerala, was one of the members of Sakhi who spoke with DGP Behera. She remembers Mathew’s case as one that shook her belief in the justice system and described it as a “horrendous case” where there was a “complete violation of justice”. She said she wrote to AI-SATS pointing this out, but did not receive even an acknowledgement.“When we went to see Behera, he asked us, ‘Why should I believe you?’ Mathew could be lying,” Gopal told The Wire.Members of Sakhi then told Behera that it appeared that it was he who had asked the local police to stall the case and asked him to make the call to move the case forward.Gopal recalled that Behera made the call in front of them. “He did an elaborate act of asking the officer on the other end if he had ever asked them to stall the case, to which the officer replied, ‘Never’,” she said.A sub-inspector at the Museum police station lodged a first information report on September 9, 2016.Chargesheet excerpt where the police testify that their investigation proved the guilt of Binoy Jacob in the sexual harassment case Mathew filed against him.Mathew said the expenses of challenging an order and travelling to various appellate authorities had been draining her limited finances. “The cost of my sexual harassment complaint has been more than Rs two lakh, given the number of follow-ups I had to do. I had to borrow money in my search for justice.”Still not the endThough on July 16, Jacob was asked to resign from his position by Bhadra International in light of the gold smuggling scandal and his association with Swapna Suresh, Mathew stated, “AI-SATS, till date, has not taken any punitive action against him on the grounds of sexual harassment.”Mathew still awaits justice in the police case she had filed at the Museum police station, Thiruvananthapuram. She said she has visited the assistant public prosecutor (APP) twice to confirm that she does not intend to drop the case.“But the APPs in the case keep changing and I have already repeated my story to two of them.”When contacted, then Museum SI G. Sunil, said that he had filed the chargesheet in the case accusing Jacob of committing the crime. However, the current Museum SI said he would have to check the records to know the status of the case in the court.Kunjila Mascillamani is a freelance writer and filmmaker from Kerala. She lives in Bombay.