FELLOW CAPT. NYPD ‘LEWD’
Sex-harass & revenge claims
An NYPD narcotics captain plans to sue the department, claiming that a fellow captain harassed her with questions about her sex life — and that she was targeted with an Internal Affairs probe after complaining.
Sharon Carolyn Balli, the first Indian-Guyanese woman ever to be made captain and a retired Army major, filed a notice of claim with the city Comptroller’s Office on Thursday, seeking $5 million.
“I’m not an average female,” Balli told The Post.
“And yet this is extremely disrespectful on so many different levels and it’s quite scary.”
Her workplace was a “boys club,” she alleged, adding, “I’ve been living six months of hell.”
Balli, assigned to Manhattan South Narcotics, had complained about Capt. Hariton Marachilian after he allegedly repeatedly asked about her sex life, her notice of claim says.
“Do you have great sex?’ and “You need to have more sex,” she recalled him saying, her claim says.
She also claims in the notice that Marachilian tried to get into their shared executive bathroom on “several occasion [sic] from December 2019 to June 2020 while [she was] taking a shower.”
In addition, he allegedly tried multiple times to catch Balli undressing by using a spare key to her locked office.
Another colleague, Capt. Edwin Nuez — a friend of Marachilian’s — also made lewd comments, Balli alleged.
But when Balli reported the allegations, Deputy Inspector Andrew Arias allegedly told her that she had to “deal with it” and “I am telling you to stand down and shut the f--k down.”
After she filed a complaint with the Employment Opportunity Commission, she was targeted with an Internal Affairs probe, according to the claim, for setting up a camera in her office to see if her two colleagues went in there while she was away.
According to the notice, she believed someone had popped the tires on her bike and had been adding something to her coffee to make her sick.
“We will review the lawsuit,” an NYPD spokesperson said.