Allegations of sexual harassment surface against now-retired SC justice; Incident allegedly took place during official internship

Justice AK Ganguly, who recently submitted his resignation as WBSRC Chairperson, was not the only Supreme Court judge against whom allegations of sexual harassment were made. In December last year, the Supreme Court received an affidavit from a law graduate who claimed she had been sexually harassed while interning with a Supreme Court judge..As per the affidavit, the incident occurred while the graduate was a student of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata and interning with the Supreme Court. Unlike the allegations against Justice Ganguly, this time around the allegations are leveled at a then-sitting Supreme Court judge..It will be interesting to see what the response of the Supreme Court will be this time around. As per our story on December 19, 2013 the Supreme Court had informed this intern that the complaint would not be entertained. Furthermore, following the Full Court meeting held on December 5, 2013, Chief Justice Sathasivam had categorically declared that,.“…representations made against former Judges of this court are not entertainable by the administration of the Supreme Court.”.While coming to this conclusion, Chief Justice Sathasivam had also relied on the fact that,.“[the] intern was not an intern on the roll of the Supreme Court and that the concerned Judge had already demitted office on account of superannuation on the date of the incident” (Emphasis supplied).In an interview to The Indian Express Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh said that while she was unaware of the facts of this case,.“In my opinion, the full-court order, if it applies to an incident which occurred when the judge was a sitting judge is not a correct decision. I would maintain that, forget jurisdiction, they have the duty and the authority to investigate any complaint made by any woman that she was harassed by a person who was a sitting judge when she was an official intern with the SC. There’s no way they can wash their hands of it.”