#MeToo: Disability rights activist accuses visually impaired man of harassment

NEW DELHI: A gender and disability rights activist, who is herself facing a mental illness, has accused a "senior visually-impaired activist" of sexual harassment in a blog post on the website "Feminism In India".

Shampa Sengupta, shared her MeToo story in a blog titled "Facing Abuse From Within The Disability Sector: My #MeToo Moment". She has alleged sexual harassment by a former colleague whom she first met 18 years ago and with whom she worked for a brief period of time at an international NGO.

Keeping the identity of the alleged harasser anonymous by calling him "CG", Shampa said the incident took place four years back, but she did not have the courage to reveal it to the world.

In the blog post, Shampa describes how her harasser, who was then also a high-ranking government official, took her to his hotel room and touched her hands inappropriately despite her using force to move her hand away from his grip.

Sengupta said that she felt trapped,"because who would have believed if I told that I was molested by a blind man?"

Delving into the complex nature of the incident, she writes, "And even if I complained, what would I say? CG touched me? Being a blind man, touching was normal for him. How would I explain this was a different kind of touch? My being in this sector for so long, also taught me what usual touch of blind men felt like. Come on, I work with them even now. No other blind person has ever made me feel uncomfortable till now. In reality, I was in denial mode that sexual harassment can happen to me."

"It was suffocating, to say the least. But I did not know how to run away and leave a 100% blind man all alone in a hotel room," she further writes.

Sengupta emphasises that the harassment seemed more bizarre given that CG was a disabled person working for the upliftment of disabled people and he knew that she was also an activist and was also aware about her depression problem.

She ends her story saying that she has no intention to file a lawsuit and the only reason she is talking about her experience four years later is because she wants, "women in the disability sector to open up and talk about the sexual harassment they faced within the sector" and "have all disability groups to constitute their own sexual harassment committees."

Updated: TOI's policy on covering #MeToo