The woman and the executive were on a flight from Kolkata to Abu Dhabi. (Representational)
A woman was allegedly shown porn clips and groped by a senior executive from a Jindal group company aboard a flight from Kolkata to Abu Dhabi. Jindal Steel Chairperson Naveen Jindal has assured the woman that the matter will be investigated at the earliest and strict action will be taken against the executive.
Speaking to NDTV on Friday and in a series of posts on X, the 28-year-old, who lives in Kolkata and is the founder of an organisation that works on menstrual rights, said she was headed to Boston and had taken a transit flight to Abu Dhabi on Etihad Airways when a man sitting next to her struck up a conversation with her. She identified the man as Dinesh Kr Saraogi and estimated his age to be around 65.
The woman said Mr Saraogi, a senior executive at a Jindal group company, told her he lives in Oman but travels frequently. Having shared that he is from Churu in Rajasthan and has two sons who are married and live in the US, he extended his support to her as a young person and offered to help her if she needed anything.
"He suddenly moved on to ask me if I have hobbies and I said I enjoy reading and writing. He also asked me if I like watching movies and I said I do. He then pulled out his phone and earphones and said he had some clips he could show me. Not suspecting anything, I agreed. It turned out that he started showing me porn videos. The content was explicit and vulgar and I think my body started going into a state of shock because I just could not understand what was happening," the woman told NDTV.
"He slowly started nuzzling my neck, coming towards me and moving his hands around my body. That's when I think I snapped out of that scared state, ran to the washroom and reached out to the air crew. The Etihad team was extremely kind because they could see that I was uncomfortable. When I told them what had happened, they made me sit where the air hostesses usually sit and served me tea and fruits," she added.
The woman claimed that after she left her seat, Mr Saraogi kept calling the staff members to ask where she had gone and if something had happened to her in the washroom. The air hostess, she said, repeatedly told him that it was not her prerogative to tell him and if something had indeed happened, it was her concern and not his.
"There were only eight business class passengers and all my co-passengers could also tell there was something wrong. The members of the crew informed the Abu Dhabi police and two cops were waiting near the runway when the aircraft landed. I could not file a formal complaint because that would have meant missing my connecting flight to Boston," she said.
The 28-year-old said the man did not deny what happened and the police told her he was willing to apologise, but she did not want to interact with him and they respected that.
Stating that it was unfortunate that she could not file a complaint in Abu Dhabi itself, the woman said she narrated her account on X and has now written to the Kolkata Police. "I want to ensure this is taken forward in some way or the other so that this does not happen to anyone else."
'Showed Courage'
Responding to the woman's posts on X, Mr Jindal said his group of companies has a zero-tolerance policy on such issues.
"Thank you for reaching out and speaking up! It takes a lot of courage to do what you did and I want you to know that we have a zero-tolerance policy for such matters. I have asked the team to immediately investigate the matter and thereafter strictest and necessary action will be taken," Mr Jindal, who is also a BJP MP, said.
When NDTV reached out to the industrialist, he refused to comment on the matter.
To a question about his post on X, the woman said that the fact that she got a response was a good sign.
"The reason I decided to put this on social media, putting my mental health at risk, is because I hoped that it would land on the right ears and the response is an indication of that. But it is also a formal response and neither he (Mr Jindal) nor anyone from his team has reached out to me. There is no action that I can see. I hope he will take some action... Predators like him (Mr Saraogi) need to be removed from positions of power," she said.