APTransco engineer dismissed

For the first time, a chief engineer of APTransco has been dismissed from service for cheating a woman and sexually harassing over a dozen others.

The dismissal was kept secret by APTransco officials as they thought it would tarnish the image of the public utility. Investigations by this newspaper revealed that the dismissed chief engineer, Mr K. Rajamannar, faced several allegations including sexual harassment of female subordinates and bigamy.

Many women employees had even applied for transfer unable to bear his harassment. Some of them finally mustered courage to inform the misdeeds of the official to the women’s complaints committee.

“Victims told us that the officer used to sing love songs describing subordinate employees in a nasty manner,” said the secretary of the women’s committee, Ms G. Uma. “Many of them bore his torture silently for years but poured out their woes after the first complaint was given.”

The official used to target widows and divorcees by offering them favours. One employee, Ms Anamika (name changed) lodged a complaint stating that Mr Rajamannar had cheated her after promising to marry after divorcing his first wife.

“Nearly 12 women employees suffered silently as he was their head of department and threatened to block their promotions and increments,” said the, president of Women’s Welfare Association, Ms V. Anuradha.

“We conducted an inquiry and submitted a report to the joint managing director,” said Ms K. Radha, president of the women’s complaint committee and chief engineer, IPC division. Based on the inquiry report, the senior IPS officer, Mr Umesh Sharraf, who is also joint managing director of APTransco, took the extraordinary decision to dismiss the chief engineer by issuing the Memo No.CGM(HRD&Trg)/DE/DC-15-p1/2008-20.

There are hundreds of such cases pending before the government, but in none of the cases has such strong action been taken.