SHILLONG, June 28: The Meghalaya Cricket Association has dismissed its Under-23 women’s team’s head coach and assistant manager and suspended its honorary secretary after the Meghalaya State Commission for Women found them guilty of sexual harassment and institutional negligence in handling complaints by women cricketers.
In a strongly worded letter to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, MCA president James P. K. Sangma described the case as a “deeply disturbing” example of abuse of authority over young women players and sought national-level intervention to strengthen safeguards for women cricketers.
The action follows complaints submitted by members of the MCA Under-23 Women’s Cricket Team in December 2025, alleging sexual harassment by then head coach Hemant Roy and assistant manager Sanjay Mondal during a tournament in Agartala.
The complaints were investigated by the Meghalaya State Commission for Women under the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
According to the commission’s findings, Roy subjected women players to repeated suggestive comments on their bodies and appearance, used vulgar language during team meetings and engaged in targeted harassment and intimidation.
Mondal, meanwhile, was found to have physically assaulted a woman cricketer in his hotel room in Agartala, a charge that he reportedly admitted before the commission, attributing his conduct to intoxication—a defence rejected by the panel.
The commission also pulled up former MCA office-bearers, particularly honorary secretary Rayonald Kharkamni, for failing to act on the complaints and suppressing action on the matter.
In his letter to BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, Sangma said the complaints “drifted” in the association’s inbox for months without action.
“A young woman cricketer was physically assaulted in a hotel room by the man entrusted with managing her team. The Head Coach made comments about the bodies of the players he was supposed to be developing. And when complaints were eventually filed, there were attempts to intimidate the complainants into silence,” he wrote.
Invoking his emergency powers under the MCA constitution, Sangma ordered the immediate dismissal and permanent debarment of Roy and Mondal from all roles within the association. Kharkamni has been suspended pending disciplinary proceedings and issued a show-cause notice.
The MCA president also alleged that despite agreeing to the appointment of retired Justice B.D. Agarwal as Ombudsman, Kharkamni had “systematically tried to suppress” the office, leaving the association without an effective grievance redressal mechanism mandated by the reforms recommended by the Lodha Committee.
“What the MSCW’s findings reveal is a pattern that is, regrettably, not unique to Meghalaya—individuals entrusted with positions of administrative and technical authority over young women cricketers exploiting those positions for personal gratification and institutional self-protection,” Sangma said.
Seeking BCCI’s intervention, the MCA has requested the national body to record the findings, consider barring the accused from all BCCI-affiliated activities and assist Meghalaya in implementing institutional reforms, including constituting a compliant Internal Committee under the POSH Act and adopting formal anti-sexual harassment policies.
“The women cricketers of Meghalaya deserve the full weight of this institution’s protection,” Sangma wrote, urging the BCCI to ensure that such incidents are never repeated in Indian cricket.
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