A young lawyer has alleged that she was sexually harassed last December by a now retired Supreme Court judge with whom she was an intern.
The girl, who graduated from Kolkata’s National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) this year, said the judge, who was “old enough to be her grandfather”, harassed her in a hotel room during the time Delhi had erupted following the brutal gang rape of
Nirbhaya, the name given to the 23-year-old medical student raped and ultimately killed by six men on a bus. She made the sensational charge first in blog she wrote on November 6 for ‘Journal of Indian Law and Society’, and repeated it on Monday (November 11) in an interview for the website ‘Legally India’.
The NUJS graduate conceded she was “cowardly” in deciding not to wage legal battle against her alleged tormentor but decided to speak out “as I felt I had a responsibility to ensure that other young girls were not put in a similar situation”.
Currently a fellow with ‘Natural Justice: Lawyers for Communities and the Environment’, the young woman said she kept quiet because of the high position the judge enjoyed and that she was too stunned at the time to even react with anger.
In her interview for ‘Legally India’, she said, “I have heard of three other cases (of sexual harassment) by the same judge and I know of at least four other girls who’ve faced harassment from other judges — not perhaps as [bad as mine]. Most of them were in the chambers of the judge [with] other people around, so it never gets too bad. A girl I know faced continuous sexual harassment throughout and sexual advances, and actually faced troubles through her work because of it.”
In her blog, she wrote: “Last December was momentous for the feminist movement in the country – almost an entire population seemed to rise up spontaneously against the violence on women, and the injustices of a seemingly apathetic government. In the strange irony of situations that our world is replete with, the protests were the backdrop of my own experience.
“In Delhi at that time, interning during the winter vacations of my final year in university, I dodged police barricades and fatigue to go to the assistance of a highly reputed, recently retired Supreme Court judge whom I was working under during my penultimate semester. For my supposed diligence, I was rewarded with sexual assault (not physically injurious, but nevertheless violating) from a man old enough to be my grandfather. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that long after I’d left the room, the memory remained, in fact, still remains, with me.”
Why did she wait so long to come out with the charges? She wrote in her blog post, “All the talk during that time was of stricter punishment, of baying for the blood of ‘creepy’ men. Five years of law school had taught me to look to the law for all solutions – even where I knew that the law was hopelessly inadequate – and my reluctance to wage a legal battle against the judge left me feeling cowardly.
“On reflection though, I cannot help but wonder why I should have felt that way. As mentioned earlier, I bore, and still bear, no real ill-will towards the man, and had no desire to put his life’s work and reputation in question. On the other hand, I felt I had a responsibility to ensure that other young girls were not put in a similar situation.
“Allowing myself to feel more than just anger at a man who violated me, something that I had never done before, is liberating! So, I want to ask you to think of one thing alone – when dealing with sexual violence, can we allow ourselves to embrace feelings beyond or besides anger, and to accept the complexity of emotions that we face when dealing with any traumatic experience?”
It will be interesting to see what action is proposed by the anti-sexual harassment committee, which was set up by the July 17 order of a bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir. The apex court framed regulations to protect women lawyers from sexual harassment at the hands of male counterparts within the court complex, including inside chambers within the court precincts.
The bench had taken a broader definition of “sexual harassment” to include sending of undesirable, sexually coloured text or voice messages or sexually explicit material to women advocates and also stalking. Complaints against sexual harassment would be heard by a Gender Sensitization and Internal Complaints Committee (GSICC), which is headed by a sitting SC judge.
