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The Mumbai police have registered a complaint of sexual harassment against Suparn Pandey, CEO and co-founder of Indian digital media site ScoopWhoop, reports Catch News. Like Buzzfeed, ScoopWhoop focuses on social and entertainment posts. It has a section dedicated to women and regularly posts articles on women’s empowerment.
In the complaint, a senior executive who worked at ScoopWhoop from 2015 until recently says Suparn Pandey got uncomfortably close under various pretexts and also touched her inappropriately. She says he also made remarks in public about her sexuality.
The complainant also accuses co-founders Sattvik Mishra and Sriparna Tikekar of abetting the harassment. She says they took no action despite entreaties by her, and she continued to be put in situations where she had to work closely with Suparn Pandey.
The complaint says the sexual harassment and threats against lodging a formal complaint escalated until she had to quit. “Mr. Pandey got so bold as to send me a lewd video over the official Gmail chat, in which the words were “aapnu jeans dheeli karo” (“loosen your jeans”),” reads the FIR (first information report) filed with the police.
ScoopWhoop has issued a statement on the allegation. “We are extending full cooperation to the police to conduct a full and fair investigation into the matter,” it says.
Indian law requires all workplaces with over 10 employees to have an internal complaints committee to take up complaints of sexual harassment. “We have taken every step to ensure the complainant gets a fair hearing and are following the rule book on workplace harassment,” the ScoopWhoop statement claims.
See: Are you sexist and you don’t know it? Why you should ask yourself that if you’re in tech
The case against the ScoopWhoop founder comes a month after Mumbai police booked Arunabh Kumar, the founder of another digital media site, The Viral Fever, on charges of sexual harassment made by a former employee that went viral on social media.
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