WARNING: The following report contains details that some readers may find distressing.
Shillong, Jun 28: The full extent of the sexual harassment faced by members of the Meghalaya U-23 women’s cricket team have been laid bare with coach Hemant Roy and manager Sanjay Mandal’s despicable acts revealed in gory detail.
The two were accused by five cricketers and one member of the support staff, who had complained to the Meghalaya State Commission for Women (MSCW), of sexual harassment. The MSCW found that these accusations were accurate and corroborated by other members of the team and by testimony of the accused.
Acting on the order of the quasi judicial body, Meghalaya Cricket Association President James PK Sangma yesterday banned them for life from any cricket activities in the state, while also informing the BCCI of the decision. Sangma also suspended the Honorary Secretary Rayonald Kharkamni after the MSCW found that he did not act when the complaint was brought to the MCA’s attention in December.
Against Mandal, the commission found (to which he later confessed) that, as assistant manager of the team during a tournament in Agartala in December 2025, “you summoned a woman player (Complainant No. 3) to your hotel room, offered her alcohol, physically assaulted her — pulling her to the bed, pulling at her clothing and attempting to touch her person — and made comments that the Commission has characterised as reflecting an attitude of objectifying women.”
Mandal didn’t stop there but “thereafter subjected the complainant to repeated video and voice calls on WhatsApp, requesting her to send another woman player to your room and making further obscene communications.”
In front of the MSCW he admitted to the conduct, attributing it to intoxication, “a claim the Commission rightly and strongly rejected.”
The MCA President added, “What you did was not a lapse in judgment or a misunderstanding — it was a deliberate physical assault on a young woman cricketer in your care, compounded by sustained harassment thereafter. The trust that the MCA, the players and their families place in those entrusted with the management of a women’s cricket team is sacred and inviolable. You have betrayed that trust in the most egregious manner possible. The findings of the MSCW establish conduct that is not merely a breach of your contractual and professional obligations to the MCA, but a serious violation of the dignity, bodily autonomy and fundamental rights of a woman player representing Meghalaya. The MCA cannot and will not permit any individual found guilty of such conduct to remain associated with this organisation in any capacity whatsoever.”
Mandal was terminated as Assistant Manager and permanently debarred from holding any coaching, management, administrative, selection or any other position within the MCA, and from involvement in any MCA activity, camp, tournament, or programme in any capacity whatsoever. Mandal is, according to the Shillong Cricket Association website, an Executive Member of that district association. It is not clear whether the MCA’s action has any bearing on this.
Regarding Roy, the coach made “repeated and suggestive comments on the physical appearance and bodies of women players, used inappropriate, vulgar and abusive language during team meetings, made targeted personal comments constituting verbal harassment and humiliation of individual players, refused to allow female staff members to be present during team meetings and engaged in anger and intimidation towards players in your charge.”
This, again, happened during the same tournament in Agartala.
The MSCW also said that Roy’s brother, who is an MCA selector but who was not named in the order, “sought to intimidate complainants by threatening to drop them from the players’ list in retaliation for the complaints” made against Roy.
He was “permanently debarred from holding any coaching, training, selection, management, administrative or any other position” within the MCA and from involvement in any MCA activity, camp, tournament, or programme in any capacity whatsoever.
At yesterday’s press conference Sangma said he felt ashamed that such things had been allowed to happen in the MCA but he feared that there are plenty of other such cases that have so far not come out. He praised the bravery of the six who raised this complaint and hoped it will encourage others to come forward.
