RK Pachauri Breaks His Silence Over Sexual Harassment Allegations

RK Pachauri has expressed suspicion that his accuser may have been out to entrap him from the very beginning.

Dr RK Pachauri (Photo: PTI)

RK Pachauri, Nobel peace prize winner, former IPCC boss and current Executive Vice Chairman (on leave) of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has broken his silence over the allegations of sexual harassment levelled at him by a young TERI researcher.

The Guardian reports that Pachauri claims the accuser had been set up by his detractors to entrap him.

What is disturbing [is] that right from the first day over a period of about 16 months she was creating and assembling an archive of messages, which to anyone would seem very unusual. As far as I know, the emails, text messages etc that she collected were personal, semi-personal and only in a few cases official.

RK Pachauri to <i>The Guardian</i>

Pachauri alleges that the complainant may have been out to entrap him. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Claiming that his poems had been manipulated to make it seem like they were addressed to her, Pachauri suggested that his email accounts had been hacked and used to send messages.

I was, during that period, extremely busy and carrying out email communications on six different email accounts. [...] I generally corresponded with her on my Gmail account, but since I had a huge volume of messages to deal with I did not frequently read my messages, except when I was alerted about a message waiting for me. When I did access this account, I would only read unread messages. Honestly, how many of us check our sent items regularly?

He has expressed suspicions that there is an organised attempt to discredit him both personally and professionally, and that money may be involved. He further claims it is “curious” that the Economic Times has led the attack on him in India, considering its former editor is Swaminathan Aiyer – currently a research fellow at the Cato Institute, which has funded climate sceptic think tanks.

Read the full article here.

Also read: Accuser Rebuts as Pachauri Speaks out for the First Time