UP woman judge alleges sexual harassment, seeks permission to die: CJI reacts
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New Delhi: Chief Justice DY Chandrachud sought a report from the registrar general of the Allahabad High Court after a woman judge in Uttar Pradesh alleged sexual harassment by a senior.
The woman judge in her widely circulated open letter addressed to the Chief Justice, requested permission to kill herself as she felt herself to be ‘an unwanted insect’, NDTV reported.
‘Kindly permit me to end my life in a dignified way. Let my life be - DISMISSED," she wrote, according to NDTV.
She alleged sexual harassment by a district judge and his associates during a stint in Barabanki, saying ‘I have been sexually harassed to the very limit.’
‘I have been treated like utter garbage. I feel like an unwanted insect," she added.
Having directed by Chief Justice Chandrachud, the Supreme Court Secretary General Atul M Kurhekar sought details from the registrar general of the Allahabad High Court on the woman judge’s complaint.
The acting Chief Justice of the High Court had also taken note of the letter, the Secretary General was informed.
The woman judge called the probe into her complaint with Internal Complaints Committee of the High Court in July 2023 ‘a farce and a sham’.
‘The witnesses in the enquiry are immediate Subordinates of the District Judge. How the Committee expects the Witnesses to depose against their Boss is beyond my understanding,’ she wrote.
She said she had requested for the transfer of the accused for fair probe but Supreme Court dismissed it in ‘just eight seconds’.
‘All I requested was that the District Judge be transferred during the pendency of the inquiry. The bare minimum prayer was not heeded to,’ she wrote.
The two-page letter said that she has no will to live anymore, adding ‘I have been rendered to a Walking Corpse in the last year and a half. There is no purpose in carrying this soulless and lifeless body around anymore. There is no purpose left in my life’.
