By IANS
New Delhi : The Unicef Wednesday said it was not aware of any inquiry against the organisation’s country head here by the Indian government following allegations of sexual harassment.
The Unicef said in a statement that it “was not aware about the inquiry carried out by the ministry of women and child development, nor the letter to the ministry of external affairs”.
“Therefore, Unicef is not in a position to comment at this point in time,” it said.
An employee of the organisation had last year accused the Unicef’s representative in India, Cecilio Adorna, of sexual harassment. After an internal inquiry, she was told that the charges were not “convincingly proven”.
“When I asked for a copy of the report, I was told that it would not be handed over to me,” the complainant told IANS. Her job contract also eliminated two months after she made those charges.
She then approached Delhi Police earlier this year, but they refused to register a first information report (FIR), as there could be no criminal prosecution of Adorna, who had diplomatic immunity.
Her “breakthrough” came when she met Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Renuka Chowdhury, who initiated an “informal inquiry” in September.
The inquiry was conducted by the then secretary WCD, Deepa Jain Singh, based on whose results Chowdhury wrote a letter to the external affairs ministry requesting that Adorna be stripped of diplomatic immunity so that law can take its course, according to media reports Wednesday.
The victim, however, said that while she had given her statement to the inquiry led by former WCD secretary, she had not been intimated about its recommendations. “I learnt about the outcome only from media reports this morning,” she said.
When contacted, officials of the ministry of external affairs refused to comment. They, however, said that diplomatic immunity, which is covered under the Vienna Convention, is only removed for very serious offences.
The procedure required the ministry to take action on the basis of a thorough investigation to establish the facts of a case. The ministry has to communicate it to that foreign country or multilateral organisation if action is recommended on the diplomat.
“Usually, if such a recommendation is made known, then that country normally withdraws the person. It is in very rare cases that the immunity is actually removed,” said an official.