Law intern Archana Pushpa Lall allegedly committed suicide days after filing sexual harassment case against two lawyers, Chandra Naik & Chetan Desai.
Bengaluru: The Bengaluru police are now probing to see if a law intern, who allegedly committed suicide Saturday, five days after filing a case of sexual harassment against two advocates, was pressured to withdraw her complaint.
Archana Pushpa Lall, a native of Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, was found dead at her paying guest (PG) facility in the city’s Vyalikaval in a suspected case of suicide.
Lall, an intern with the firm Jayanth M Pattanshetti and Associates, had on 20 November filed a case of sexual harassment against advocate Chandra Naik, her senior at the firm, and Chetan Desai, a government pleader at the Karnataka High Court.
Naik had allegedly introduced the law intern to Desai.
Soon after filing the case, Lall reportedly informed her friends that she had been receiving threatening calls asking her to withdraw her complaint.
The Bengaluru police are now investigating not only her detailed sexual harassment complaint but also if she was pressured to withdraw the case.
Rahal Kumar Shahapurwad, DCP (East), confirmed that the police are in pursuit of the accused who are absconding but have sought bail.
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The case
In her complaint, Lall alleged that she was mentally harassed, molested and threatened by the two lawyers, Naik and Desai.
She has alleged that the sexual harassment began at her workplace when she joined in 2017. Soon after she joined the firm, she was assigned to work under Naik, who then introduced her to Desai, her complaint reads.
She accused both lawyers of taking her to pubs, restaurants and hotels under the pretext of teaching her the trade. They would allegedly force her to drink.
She has also alleged that they would show her obscene videos and send lewd messages. According to her complaint, the two men would also touch her inappropriately.
Police said that after she filed her complaint, her father Tulsi Lall, who is also a lawyer, came to the city to follow up on the case. After booking themselves in a hotel in Domlur, Archana met with her family Friday and returned to her PG later that night. On Saturday, she reportedly did not respond to her father’s phone calls. Her PG owner Leelavathi found her dead.
“At 11.15 am on the 24th, I got a call from the housekeeper that Pushpa was unconscious in her room. I immediately called up her brother, who informed me that she had lodged a complaint of sexual harassment with the commercial street police station and had an appointment with the DCP in this regard,” Leelavathi’s statement to police reads. “We took her to the hospital where she was declared dead. We do not know the reason for her death and considering the family statement we feel it is suspicious.”
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