An award-winning Indian writer is on the run after five women who worked as cooks at a charity school he founded accused him of rape, police said on Friday.
Laxman Mane, 63, disappeared after the women filed complaints earlier this week, alleging that he had repeatedly assaulted them between 2003 and 2010, mostly on the school premises in western Maharashtra state.
"He has been on the run since the first case was filed at midnight on Monday," said Amol Tambe, additional superintendent of police in the state's Satara district, where Mane was living.
"A new complaint was filed on Wednesday. We have dispatched police teams to trace him," Tambe told AFP by telephone.
Mane is executive president of the trust that runs the school for underprivileged children.
The case comes at a time when India is under fire for its treatment of women following the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in December and a series of other sexual assaults.
Mane, who writes in the local Marathi language, was awarded the Padma Shri
-- one of India's highest civilian awards -- for his contribution to vernacular literature in 2009.
His autobiography titled 'Upara' (Outsider) bagged the prestigious Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) award in 1981.
The women, all of whom are aged between 30 and 35, claimed Mane raped them in the school's office, storeroom and canteen as well as at a government-run guesthouse, after promising to make them permanent employees.
A clerk at the school has been accused of abetting.
Mane's family has dismissed the charges as baseless.
"Some of the employees of the school seem to have conspired to implicate my father in a false case," Mane's son Bhai was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency. (AFP)
<관련 한글 기사>
유명 작가, 여성 6명 성폭행 후 도피
인도의 한 작가가 자선학교의 요리사 6명을 강간한 혐의로 몰리자 행적을 감췄다.
렉스맨 매인(63)은 2003년과 2010년 서부 마하라시트라주에 위치한 자선학교 부지에서 요리사로 일하는 여성 6명을 수차례 성폭행한 혐의를 받고 있다.
메인이 거주지인 사타라 지역의 경찰 관계자는 “그는 처음으로 소송이 접수된 월요일 자정부터 사라졌다. 지난 수요일 새로운 소송이 제기됐다. 이에 경찰은 그를 행방을 쫓고 있다”고 말했다.
매인은 불우한 학생들을 돕는 학교 재단 대표직을 맡고 있으며, 피해여성들을 정규직원으로 채용해주겠다며 학교 사무실과 매점 등지에서 성폭행 한 것으로 알려졌다.
매인은 지역 언어인 마라티어로 쓴 작품으로 2009년 문학상을 수상하고 1981년에는 자서전 “우파라 (아웃사이더)’로 인도에서 신망있는 문학상을 수상했다.
학교의 한 직원 또한 이 사건에 연루되어 성폭행 방조혐의를 받고 있는 가운데 매인의 가족은 혐의를 극구 부인했다.
매인의 아들 바히는 “학교의 일부 직원들이 아버지를 허위사건에 연루시키려는 음모를 꾸민 것 같다”고 말했다.
