Charged with molestation, Navy officer sent on leave

Acting on the allegations of sexual molestation of a Naval medical officer of Lieutenant rank by her senior who is a decorated Naval doctor of Surgeon Commander rank early this month, the Indian Navy has ordered a Board of Inquiry. The Naval officer has alleged in her complaint that there were two attempts to molest her this month itself.

The first incident is alleged to have occurred on May 6 at the residence of a senior Admiral whose ailing mother the Navy doctors had gone to treat. On the same day, the lady officer complained to her higher ups, but the matter was not treated with the seriousness it merited. She then lodged a strongly worded formal complaint after another attempt to molest was made by her senior doctor colleague.

A defence source said: “The Navy had received a complaint of a case of alleged molestation on 6 May, 2016. The Navy took cognisance of the complaint and a Board of Inquiry was ordered immediately.”

Advising restraint till the final conclusions are made as the probe into the case is almost complete, the source added that the top Navy officer — at whose residence the alleged act took place —was on official duty in Visakhapatnam while his wife was in Mumbai where she works.

The Surgeon Commander — the alleged perpetrator — was stationed at INS India during the occurrence of the alleged incident and has been sent on leave since then.

A naval establishment in New Delhi, INS India looks after the administrative and other requirements of the naval headquarters and personnel posted in the national capital.

A slew of sex scandals have rocked the Indian Navy in the last few years. In 2011, a senior Naval officer was dismissed from service after his sexually explicit pictures emerged with a Russian lady, while in 2014, a Commodore in the Southern Naval Command (SNC) was sacked for “stealing the affections of a brother officer’s wife”.

Recently, the Supreme Court issued directives to set up a Special Investigation Team to probe a wife-swapping case at the INS Kochi base after a Navy officer’s wife alleged that she was coerced to participate in wife-swapping activities.