#MeToo: Senior journalist from The Hindu goes on leave

A week after Delhi-based woman journalist Yamini Nair wrote about an incident of sexual harassment, without taking names, a senior journalist with The Hindu — identified by others as the aggressor — has gone on leave till he retires on December 31, 2018.

C Gouridasan Nair, Resident Editor of the publication in Kerala, posted on his Facebook page that he had requested his superiors to relieve him of his responsibilities in the organisation and proceed on leave; he said he received their permission on Monday.

Yamini had, in a blog post on October 9, written about the harassment by a “teacher-figure” when he visited Chennai where she was working at the time, in 2005. She did not name the aggressor in her post but Nair was identified as the accused in some of the comments on the post which was widely shared on social media as part of the #Me Too campaign.

N Ram, Chairman of The Hindu Publishing Group, tweeted on Tuesday that the organisation took Yamini’s post seriously and resolved the issue without taking a “purely technical view” on it.

“Unlike many others, this senior journalist who was not formally named decided not to dig in – but called it a day,” he tweeted.

Ram said Nair responded immediately to questions raised by the organisation regarding the allegation, expressed “deep pain and dismay” and explained how he viewed the matter.

“He was not named, it is probable the formal process would have led nowhere, but he called it a day,” he tweeted.