In a small chamber overlooking the District and Sessions Court in Nashik, Baba Sayyed, 57, and Rahul Kasliwal, 45, are battling the most high-profile case of their careers. The two lawyers, partners and close friends for 25 years, are representing all but two of the accused tcs bpo case Where eight employees – six men and two women – have been booked in various cases for rape, sexual assault, harassment and religious coercion. Except one of them, 26 year old Nida Khan, the rest of the accused are in jail.
The case, which was first reported by the media on April 9, has rocked Nashik, implicated one of the country’s largest IT companies, and raised questions about media access, HR redressal mechanisms and investigations.
What did TCS say?
In a statement issued on 17 April, TCS CEO And MD K Krittivasan said, “TCS holds itself to the highest standards of employee welfare and institutional conduct. We are fully committed to the safety, dignity and well-being of each employee… We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any form of coercion or misconduct. We are focused on supporting our employees and ensuring a safe and respectful workplace across all our locations. We continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies so that the case is fully, transparently investigated.” The investigation can be conducted properly and the correct conclusions can be reached.”
Original
It seems that the matter started due to a sour love affair. On March 26, four days after Eid, the family of a 23-year-old TCS BPO employee lodged a complaint at Deolali police station saying that she had started fasting during Ramzan and wearing hijab, causing panic and concern in the staunchly Hindu family. Her relatives told police that when they interrogated her, the woman confessed to being in love with Danish Shaikh, 31, her colleague in a BPO and that he had promised to marry her.
Nashik Police Commissioner Sandeep Karnik immediately realized the importance of the complaint and took action. “Since she was afraid to file a complaint, our team reached out to her and gave her the courage to do so,” Karnik told HT.
charge
Sheikh was booked under several sections of the Indian Code of Justice (BNS), including sections 69 (sexual intercourse obtained through false promise of marriage), 75 (sexual harassment), 299 (insulting religion or religious belief), and 3(5) (constructive or joint liability).
In her complaint, the woman said that in February she received a message from a woman named Mehreen who identified herself as Danish’s wife and said the couple had two children. When the woman spoke to Danish he told her that he was never interested in marrying her. It is unclear why the woman did not immediately contact the police and instead started fasting during Ramzan.
Just a week before the woman’s complaint, the Nashik Police Commissioner made headlines with the arrest of politically strong Baba Ashok Kharat in a rape case. Within three days of Kharat’s arrest, CM Devendra Fadnavis formed an SIT under SRPF commandant Tejashwi Satpute, and transferred all investigations related to Kharat to him.
Taking the hint, Karnik also constituted an SIT under ACP Sandeep Mitke. He decided to send undercover operatives to investigate the alleged activities going on in the BPO. Nashik city police officials told the media, including this newspaper, that a team of six women officers were sent to the BPO as housekeeping staff through a third-party vendor without informing TCS officials.
BPO was a ‘high security area’
However, people familiar with the matter at the BPO told HT that the BPO is a “high security area” and entry is possible only through an access card, which has to be swiped twice: once to enter the lobby, common areas, etc., and again to enter the Offshore Delivery Center (ODC) where most of the accused and complainants worked. This area is divided from the rest of the office by frosted glass doors. Only people working at ODC were given access to it. “It is difficult to understand how undercover police officers could have entered the BPO,” one person said, adding that any housekeeping and cleaning staff could have gained entry when the ODC was relatively empty between shifts.
When a TCS spokesperson was contacted about the undercover police operatives, they said they were “obligated to comment on specific questions as these are matters of ongoing investigation.”
About 170 people are employed in the BPO. Within a week of the first FIR, the police registered eight more cases against seven employees, six of whom were arrested. They included the two leaders of the team, Tausif Bilal Attar, 37, and Raza Memon, 35. The two other people arrested were Shafi Shaikh, 36, a business process analyst, and Shahrukh Hussain Qureshi, 34, an associate. All were working in TCS since 2017. Ashwini Chainani, 52, a senior Pune-based officer, was arrested on April 10. Second female accused, Nida Khan, who joined in 2021, is absconding. His anticipatory bail plea will be heard on April 27.
Both Chainani and Khan were widely described as human resources personnel, which is not the case. There is a full time HR Manager in Nashik BPO.
No POSH complaints?
The bigger question remains: What changed at the BPO between 2022 and March 2026 – when the alleged incidents of harassment occurred – given that many of the accused have been working there since 2017?
According to people familiar with the facility, the office is an open-plan workplace with common areas under CCTV surveillance, although the main distribution center does not have cameras due to data privacy concerns. Employees collect their phones prior to entry. “It would be difficult to ignore misconduct in such a situation,” said one person.
Police allege that despite working in different teams and shifts, the accused worked together to create an environment of coercion and harassment and the complaints were ignored. An unresolved complaint led to Chainani’s arrest.
To add to Chainani’s troubles, TCS clarified in its statement that Nida Khan was a junior employee who was not part of the HR department, but did not mention Chainani. His lawyer Mayur Deshpande, to defend his client, points to the company’s statement that it has not received any complaint under POSH. In her police statement, a complainant said she had informed two seniors at the Nashik BPO about the harassment before mentioning it verbally to Chainani. “Both of them have not been charged,” Deshpande said. Asked about Chainani’s role, a TCS spokesperson did not comment and reiterated its April 17 statement that it had engaged Deloitte and law firm Trilegal to support the internal investigation. People familiar with the matter at BPO told HT that the company had clarified Nida Khan’s position due to the attacks on her, and that Chainani’s name being omitted does not mean she was guilty.
In her statement to the SIT on March 31, days before her arrest, Chainani told the police that after Danish Shaikh’s arrest, she had encouraged the women in the BPO to speak openly to the police.
What does the FIR say
In seven of the nine FIRs, the complainants are junior employees aged between 23 and 25; The eighth complainant is a 36-year-old Hindu woman, who is a senior employee. Under her complaint, she has alleged that one of the accused had asked her to contact a Maulvi in Ajmer for help when they were discussing her childlessness, a comment which made her “deeply uncomfortable”.
Most of the complainants have alleged that these incidents of harassment occurred between 2022 and March 2026. The allegations include asking the accused men questions about their personal lives, making inappropriate and offensive comments about their bodies, staring at them “with bad intentions”, using sexual innuendo in conversations and in some cases touching them inappropriately. Many of them said that on March 19, a week before the first FIR was filed against Danish Shaikh and two others, when they had come to the office wearing sarees or new clothes for Gudi Padwa (Maharashtrian New Year), men had made them feel uncomfortable by commenting on their attire.
A 25-year-old female complainant told police that one of the accused, Tauseef Attar, was a habitual offender who used to make sexually suggestive comments. “But since our superiors never took action against him, I was sure that even if I complained, no action would be taken.”
“The complainants came from ordinary families. They feared losing their jobs if they complained,” said an SIT officer. Apart from allegations of sexual assault, the three women told police that the accused men and Nida Khan had made objectionable comments about Hindu deities and Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj.
The sole male complainant, 36, is a senior analyst dialer who joined TCS in 2022. She has alleged that on Eid in 2023, Tausif Attar, who was her team leader at the time, took her to his home and forcibly made her wear the “cap of his religion”. However, a purported video of the same incident, reviewed by HT, shows the two men talking cordially and hugging and posing for photographs right after Tausif placed the cap on the complainant’s head. The complainant has also alleged that she was forced to eat non-vegetarian food whenever they went out, even though the accused knew that she was a vegetarian. On one occasion, the four accused persons forced him to recite the Kalma (a basic principle that declares the oneness of Allah) at his office desk, he said in the FIR obtained by HT. It is not clear why he waited so long to file a complaint.
In the FIR, citing incidents between 2022 and March 2026, the male complainant further alleged that Tausif Attar had once thrown his phone at him after an argument. He claimed that this happened after Tausif made objectionable remarks about the complainant’s wife. The complainant said that Tausif had threatened to kill him and had informed “Ashwini Madam” (Chainani) about the incident. However, Chainani has not been made an accused in the FIR registered on his complaint.
Another senior complainant, a 36-year-old woman, told police that after she complained against Shafi Shaikh over email, she was transferred to another department, while another complainant, a 25-year-old woman, told police that when she tried to complain about team leaders Raza Memon and Shahrukh Qureshi, Ashwini Chainani allegedly told her, “Tumko kyun highlight hona hai, jaane do, chhod do (Why do you want to attract attention? Let it be.) 2).It goes.
A senior police officer said, “Chainani was very friendly with the accused. Whenever she came to Nashik, they would all go out and have lunch and dinner together. She always supported them.” However, TCS says that as per their internal investigation so far, they have not received a single complaint filed under POSH rules.
What makes the Nashik BPO case particularly complex is that the FIRs are based not only on cases of sexual harassment but also on allegations of religious coercion, an inflammatory allegation in this political climate. In March, days before the Nashik case broke, the Maharashtra legislature passed the Freedom of Religion Act, popularly called the Love Jihad Act in political parlance, which punishes attempts at unlawful conversion. The Bill has been sent by the Governor to the President of India for assent. Over the past three years, several right-wing organizations under the banner of Hindu Sakal Samaj (United Hindu Society) have been running a high-decibel multi-city campaign against what they call ‘Love Jihad and Land Jihad’. Now ‘Corporate Jihad’ has also been added to that slogan.
Although the TCS BPO case is still in its initial stages, it may have far-reaching resonance.
