Ex-Minister Saseendran gets bail in sexual harassment case

A court here today granted bail to NCP leader and former minister A K Saseendran in a sexual harassment case filed against him by a woman journalist.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Prabhakaran granted bail to Saseendran on a personal surety of two persons.
The case against Saseendran was filed last year on a private complaint by the woman, in which she had alleged that he misbehaved with her when she met him for an interview.
In a twist to the case, the woman who had filed a plea in the Kerala High Court to quash the case against Saseendran based on her complaint, withdrew her petition on January 5.

Saseendran, a nominee of the Nationalist Congress Party, had resigned in April last year after a Malayalam TV channel aired a purported sleaze audio of him in conversation with a woman, who was later identified as the petitioner journalist.
The channel had later tendered an apology admitting that they had conducted a "sting operation" involving one of their journalists and not a housewife, as claimed earlier.
The Justice P S Antony Commission, which went into the allegations against the former minister, had in its report submitted to the state government in November last year stated that it could not ascertain the authenticity of the purported voice clip.