District Judge who resigned after alleging sexual harassment by HC judge reinstated, posted to Madhya Pradesh High Court

A week after the Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of a former Madhya Pradesh district judge who had resigned from service in 2014 alleging sexual harassment by a High Court judge, she has been posted as officer on special duty in the Madhya Pradesh High Court..Senior Counsel Indira Jaising who appeared on behalf of the judge tweeted the development on Thursday morning. .The judge was serving as an Additional District and Sessions Judge at Gwalior when she made the allegations against then sitting High Court judge, Justice SK Gangele. An order to transfer her to Sidhi was subsequently issued. Her appeals to be posted to alternative districts given the fact that her daughter was due to write her board examination that year had fallen on deaf ears, prompting her to resign in 2014..The sexual harassment allegations were later probed by a Parliamentary panel headed by then Supreme Court Judge, Justice R Banumathi. The panel found that the allegations were not proven. However, it concluded that the transfer of the complainant judge was irregular..After the High Court declined to reinstate her in service, the judge moved the Supreme Court seeking a declaration that her resignation from service was under coercion..A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai held that the resignation tendered by the judge was not voluntary but under coercion. "The petitioner was a Judicial Officer and a mother too. The Judicial Officer in her must have been battling with the mother in her. On one hand, was her career as a Judicial Officer; on the other hand, was the possibility of her daughter’s educational prospects and career coming into jeopardy, if she shifted to the place of posting at Sidhi. A possibility of her mind engrossed with a feeling, that she was subjected to injustice by the very Institution of Judiciary, cannot be ruled away," the Court noted.The Court also rejected the contentions that if it were to hold that the resignation was not voluntary, it will open floodgates to similarly situated judicial officers, and that if the decision of the Full Court of the Madhya Pradesh High Court is interfered with, it will stigmatize the entire institution and have catastrophic effects..Judicial officer lost battle to the mother in her: Supreme Court on transfer of Madhya Pradesh district judge