IAS officer sues magazine for being called 'eye candy'

Weekly news magazine Outlook has landed itself in fresh trouble after Smita Sabharwal, an Indian Administrative Service officer in the Telangana Chief Minister’s office, has sent a legal notice to the magazine for carrying a sexist piece on her.

In a recent edition, the magazine published a piece titled ‘No boring Babu’ without mentioning Sabharwal’s name in its ‘Deep Throat’ column. However, the column speaks of the first female IAS officer to be appointed by the Telangana chief minister’s office.

The piece spoke about how the bureaucrat is present at every meeting making a “fashion statement with her lovely saris and serves as ‘eye candy’ at meetings”.

In the legal notice, the IAS officer slammed the article and called it “distasteful, cheap and titillating”.

The legal notice says that Sabharwal was “utterly flabbergasted, shell shocked, angry and extremely disturbed by the article”.  Sabharwal said, “It is a matter of professional pride. I have spent 14 long years in service.  The write up hurt very badly. It made me think if they can do this to a bureaucrat, who is doing a serious job, possibly women across will be subjected to this sort of yellow journalism... and we must step up and put an end to it.”

Image: The column wrote how Smita Sabharwal made a fashion statement with her 'lovely saris'. Photograph: Facebook