An employee of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) is still waiting for justice a month after she filed an application against KMC City Police chief Raju Nath Pandey for abusing her.
Ganga Upreti, a head constable with the City Police, had submitted her application against Pandey to chief administrative officer Basanta Adhikari on November 25 and later to Deputy Mayor Sunita Dangol. But neither have they initiated any action against Pandey, nor has Mayor Balen Shah taken any steps in this regard.
Deputy Mayor Dangol, who is also the coordinator of KMC’s judicial committee, has the authority to take action on the matter. But she has shirked her responsibility saying she has not received any application.
“Yes, I heard such things from the media but I have not received any application. What am I supposed to do unless the victim files an application?” Dangol said.
It has been nearly two weeks since it came to light that Pandey had abused Upreti with foul language and caused her mental stress. Another KMC employee also confirmed it.
KMC should have investigated the matter and provided justice to the victim after being informed about the abuse of a female employee at the workplace. But KMC officials have not taken any action yet even though Upreti’s application to the administrative officer was registered on November 27.
Upreti, who has been with the City Police since 2016, is a permanent employee. She was on maternity leave from February to May. After she returned to work, she was assigned duty at the KMC’s office in Teku as it is easier for female employees there than elsewhere.
In October, Upreti was informed that she had been transferred to the task force division of City Police at Bag Durbar. Upreti went to inform Pandey that she would not be able to work at Bag Durbar due to her health as it would be difficult for her to do physically exhausting work such as lifting heavy loads after surgery. KMC was removing unauthorized structures, vacating encroached public land and removing street vendors at the time.
But Pandey told her to keep her domestic problems to herself and even ordered her to do 12-hour duties or resign if she couldn’t do that, Upreti has written in her complaint.
She then went to the task force division for four days during which she had to do physically demanding work such as lifting or carrying heavy objects, and as a result she suffered bleeding from the operated area of her stomach. The doctor also advised her against lifting heavy loads and doing difficult work. She then took leave for a few days.
Upreti told the duty in-charge about her problem after she felt a little better. The duty in-charge told her that he would arrange for her to work in the office itself. But Pandey did not agree to it, and Upreti could not go to work outside.
Pandey started calling Upreti to his room every day after that. He would tell her to do her duty if there were other people around. If there was no one around, he would abuse her with foul language. Upreti had started feeling scared as Pandey’s abuses grew, and she was also mentally stressed.
One day Pandey called her again. She told him that she would not be able to go to work outside as it was difficult for her to even breastfeed her baby due to her health. But Pandey told her to leave her child at home if she wanted to work or else resign.
Upreti could not even go to the office for the next few days. She received a call on September 30 asking her to report to the office, so she went with her husband and child.
As soon as Pandey saw Upreti, he told her to resign if she wanted to come to work with her baby and started verbally abusing her. He also manhandled Upreti’s husband, who was recording the incident on his mobile phone, and snatched his phone.
Pandey kept the phone with him for a month. Upreti has written in her application that she got the phone back only on November 3.
The application also states that Pandey had initiated action to freeze Upreti’s salary after deleting evidence against him from the phone.
Meanwhile, Pandey has said that all the allegations leveled against him are baseless and false. "I am a person who always raises voice about women empowerment. This is all an attempt to derail our work. If it was true, she would have spoken about it in the media," he said.
A KMC employee close to Upreti said that she waited in the belief that she would get justice from Deputy Mayor Dangol.
“We had told Ganga to speak about this matter but she waited in the hope that she would receive justice if action was taken on her application. But why have the mayor and deputy mayor not shown any interest, it’s strange,” the employee said.
