Retired Supreme Court judge and West Bengal Human Rights Commission Chairman Justice Ashok Kumar Ganguly, who faces charges of sexually harassing a law intern, has alleged victimisation by “powerful interests” against whom he reportedly passed judgments as a Judge of the apex court. Among other rulings, Justice Ganguly had pronounced judgements in the 2G scam too.
Justice Ganguly has come out with his version of the story in a letter to Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam. The copy of the letter has been forwarded even to the President of India.
He wrote: “After deep consideration of all that is going on in the media with reference to some allegations of an intern about me I am constrained to break my silence. I wish to make it clear that I never harassed nor did I make any unwelcome advances to any female intern.”
He went on to add that he was shocked by the “conduct of the officials” of the apex court and also alleged that the proceedings before the Committee set up to enquire into the alleged victim’s allegations were far from appropriate. Justice Ganguly broke his silence in the wake of the Central Government’s move to seek a Presidential Reference for his removal from WBHRC Chairman post.
Claiming that the goings-on had “deeply distressed” him, he said, “It seems to suggest there was a concerted move to tarnish my image as I had the unfortunate duty of rendering certain judgments against powerful interests.”
Justice Ganguly wrote in the letter how distressed and anguished he was that the Supreme Court did not address him correctly. “My side of the story was not heard,” Ganguly said, submitting that the intern was never harassed. He referred to the more-than-two-hour-interaction between the two whence the complainant reportedly took about 20 pages of dictation from him in her laptop.
He alleged that the Committee did not provide him a copy of the affidavit filed by the victim on the ground that the proceedings were confidential, but the contents of the same appeared in a Bengali newspaper on November 30. The incident alleged by the victim took place at a five star hotel in Delhi on December 2012 while she was interning with Justice Ganguly, long after his retirement in February that year.
The former Judge even sought to find a hole into the claims made by Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising, who went public with the affidavit submitted by the intern before the three-judge panel. “With some efforts I could collect ... a copy of the affidavit distributed by the learned ASG. The affidavit was allegedly sworn before a Notary Public in Bangalore on November 29, 2013 even though the intern deposed before the Committee two days prior to this date.
Jaising held a press conference in Kolkata on December 15, 2013 and released the affidavit to journalists stating it to be the one filed by the intern in Supreme Court. “How is it possibleIJ I find such a situation completely unacceptable. If the Committee gave a report on November 27, 2013, how could the ASG flaunt in public the intern’s affidavit of a subsequent date (sworn on November 29, 2013 in Bangalore) as having been filed before the CommitteeIJ” Ganguly questioned, raising doubts over the affidavit circulated by ASG.