In an email responding to questions from This Week in Asia on Friday, the NUS spokesman said it was aware of a second case where allegations were raised against Zheng.

A staff member who had since left the EAI filed a police report against Zheng “regarding an incident of outrage of modesty that allegedly took place in 2012”.

“Police investigations into that case were closed with the police not taking any further action,” the spokesman said.

This Week in Asia emailed Zheng at his EAI address on Wednesday requesting his comments but has yet to hear from him.

In a statement issued on behalf of Zheng on Friday, Singapore law firm Harry Elias Partnership said the academic “categorically denies” all allegations, and that his resignation from the EAI was unrelated to the sexual harassment claims.

“Professor Zheng has lent and continues to lend his utmost cooperation in the ongoing investigations by NUS ... [he] is presently considering his legal options,” the statement said.

The respected scholar, 58, was director of the EAI for more than a decade before he stepped down in June last year, saying he intended continuing as a research professor there.

Allegations against Zheng began circulating online since early August.

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A woman who wrote a series of Twitter posts using the handle @Chary19513, met This Week in Asia on Thursday and said she still worked at the institute.

Asking to be called Charlotte, not her real name, she said that she was harassed in May 2018 soon after she started working at the institute as a research assistant.

She was in her first month at work when colleagues suggested that she speak with Zheng, who was then the director, to discuss her job and career development.

Charlotte, who is in her 20s, said that when she entered Zheng’s office, he hugged her and smacked her buttocks.

“I was completely shocked and my mind went blank,” she said, recalling that she broke free and ran out of Zheng’s office, almost in tears.

She showed This Week In Asia screenshots of text messages in which she texted Zheng later that day saying she was uncomfortable with what had happened, and he replied: “Very sorry.”

Charlotte said she was in a “constant state of anxiety and fear” after the incident. She said she told some of her colleagues what had happened, and they suggested that she make a police report and seek help.

It took almost a year before she made a police report, in May last year, claiming that she had been molested. This Week In Asia has seen a copy of the report.

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The Singapore Police confirmed that a report was lodged on May 30, 2019, against a 57-year-old man, whom they did not name.

It said that following investigations, the man was issued a stern warning on April 23 this year, for outrage of modesty. This was done in consultation with the attorney general’s chambers.

In its statement, Harry Elias Partnership said the warning issued by the police to Zheng did not “amount to a pronouncement of guilt or finding of fact”.

On August 7, Charlotte took to Twitter and lashed out at the EAI management for the way it responded to her complaints.

She claimed she was admonished for accusing Zheng, and was told to stay away from other female staff whom she claimed had been harassed too.

She called Zheng a “predator” but said the school management “pretended not to know” anything. Instead, Charlotte said, she was attacked verbally by some staff who said she had “mental issues”.

She claimed she knew of others at the institute who had been bullied for complaining that they had been sexually harassed by Zheng, and had ended up resigning. But NUS said the person in the second case it was aware of did not lodge any complaint with the institute.

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The spokesman said the case “coincides” with online allegations made by Twitter user @44FFFF2.

“The staff involved in this case has left the Institute recently after her contract expired,” the spokesman said.

Asked why she took to Twitter last month, Charlotte, who is still working at the institute, said she saw how social media platforms helped unearth cases of sexual harassment in the West.

She said she hoped that by sharing her experience, other victims would also find courage to stand up for themselves.

“I feel so heartbroken and frightened,” she added.

Charlotte said since media reports on her tweets were published, she had faced “serious personal attack and humiliation” from netizens online.

She showed This Week in Asia a post on the Douban social media platform that had her photograph, with her full name, and a caption in Chinese that read: “Professor Zheng’s taste is not so bad, one look and you’ll know it’s a false accusation.”

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Charlotte said she was grateful for the help she received from the police and was satisfied with the outcome of the police investigation, even though the warning issued to Zheng meant he would have no criminal record.

She has hired a lawyer, who spoke to This Week In Asia but declined to be named. The lawyer encouraged others with similar complaints to come forward.

Separately, harassment allegations against Zheng were made by one other person on the Douban platform. The user named KT claimed to be a former staff member of the EAI. This Week in Asia could not independently verify them and the posts were later deleted.

Zheng, who was born in Zhejiang province in China, is widely known for his work on Chinese politics and economy, and has regularly contributed to Singapore publications, including the main Chinese-language daily, Lianhe Zaobao.

He was educated in Peking and Princeton Universities, and started working at the EAI as a research fellow in 1997. He left briefly in 2005 for the University of Nottingham in Britain and returned to Singapore to take over as EAI head in 2008.