Agartala, April 15: The Tripura Left Front is in a dilemma on how to deal with joint secretary Nepal Sen who has been accused of molesting a woman employee.

Official sources said the departmental inquiry against the 54-year-old Tripura Civil Service officer was stillborn as the Supreme Court had directed that a permanent committee with a majority of women members should be in place to probe such matters.

By January, the committee headed by human rights activist and former principal of Women’s College, Karabi Debbarman, was constituted and it submitted its findings after recording statements of both Sen and the victim, Nilima Roy, on March 30.

The five-member high-powered fact-finding committee found him guilty of molesting Roy, an upper division clerk in the home department, in his official chambers. Sen was posted in the chief minister’s office till December.

The members of the committee separately filed their findings to chief secretary V. Shashi Prakash on March 30 and the chairperson herself and another woman member of the committee, Rajlaxmi Chowdhury, found Sen guilty.

Official sources privy to the contents of the report said the third woman member, Bina Debbarma, merely pointed out that the allegations of molestation brought against Sen could not be proved with existing evidence.

The director of higher education, Madhusudan Bhattacharya, and principal secretary A.K. Mengotra furnished evasive reports putting on record only Roy’s allegations and Sen’s replies to them, she added.

The chief secretary will submit the report to chief minister Manik Sarkar and the matter may also come up for discussion at a meeting of the state cabinet.

But sources said in such cases the chairperson’s findings carry extra weight and that the matter would be decided at the political level.

Sen, who had studied in Agartala’s MBB College in the mid-seventies, had joined the Tripura Civil Service in 1976.

His careergraph rose sharply and he was on the point of being nominated to the IAS in December last year when he landed in a soup. On December 17, Sen called Roy to his chamber and allegedly molested her.

Unable to bear the insult, Roy went back home quietly but the pro-Congress Mahakaran Karmachari Samity got wind of the incident and stormed Sen’s chamber in the state secretariat the next day and beat him up.

Sen had to seek shelter in the chief secretary’s room in the face of the onslaught.

With the Assembly polls knocking on the door, the government tried to gloss over the issue by asking Sen to go on leave and formed a departmental inquiry committee.

The state government has not yet taken any decision though leader of the Opposition Ratanlal Nath has threatened to paralyse the budget session of the Assembly unless action is taken against Sen.