NASHIK/ PUNE, April 11 -- Nashik police on Friday arrested the eighth accused employee - the assistant general manager (HR) -- of one of the country's largest business process outsourcing (BPO), following complaints by nine staff members, including eight women of rape, sexual harassment and harassment last month. The accused, who operates from the BPO's Pune office, was produced before the court of additional chief judicial magistrate (CJM) R C Narwadiya in Nashik and was remanded to police custody till April 13. Of the remaining seven, one against whom an FIR was lodged in Devlali police station, Nashik, earlier this week, is presently in magisterial custody. While another one is absconding, five other accused were also produced before the additional CJM's court on Friday, and have been remanded to 14 days of magisterial custody. Assistant public prosecutor Aniket Awad said, "The police needs to quiz the accused since one of the complainants had stated that she had alerted the accused about seven other seniors who were allegedly involved in cases of sexual abuse, harassment and hurting religious sentiments, and yet the professional did not act." The police registered FIRs against the HR professional under relevant sections of BNS, which include abatement of the offence and defamation, at Mumbai Naka police station, Nashik. "The police are probing if the accused had received similar complaints from other women employees," he added. The defence argued that the accused had no role in the abetment of the offence. "Nothing has been mentioned in the FIR against the professional that suggest any role in the abetment of the offence," said V R Deshpande, the defence counsel. Advocates Baba Sayyed and Rahul Kasliwal, defence counsels for the five other accused, informed the court that there was no need for further police custody as they had been in custody since April 8 and the court gave police time to quiz them. "The police did not make any progress in the case and their further police custody is not required as there is nothing to be recovered from them," said the duo during the hearing. The prosecution had made a plea for five days of police custody if the accused were not cooperating with the investigators in the case. Sayyed, who represents four of the six accused, said that the alleged incidents for which his clients were charged with outraging a woman's modesty, took place between 2023 and 2025. "There were no complaints, written or oral, made by any of the women in this period," he said, adding that no internal complaints were reported to the company under the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, or the POSH Act, by any of the complainants. The exchange between the accused men and the women who have alleged sexual harassment, he said, was "friendly banter", not uncommon in their work environment. Meanwhile, on Friday, the Nashik city unit of BJP staged a protest in front of the BPO's Nashik office demanding strict action against the firm and the employees responsible for the alleged offences. The party's chief president, Sunil Kedar, said that he has handed over a memorandum to the police requesting probe....