A middle-aged lawyer on Saturday filed a police complaint against a former Calcutta High Court Judge accusing him of harassing her for refusing to marry him.
The woman has charged the Judge, who is not a resident of Bengal and who retired little more than a year ago, with “murder threats”, said a senior police officer of Bankura adding the police were “looking into all angles.”
The incident comes within days of forced resignation of former Supreme Court Judge Ashok Ganguly as Chairman of West Bengal Human Rights Chairman after a law intern alleged sexually harassment against him. Curiously, the resignation of Justice Ganguly — who cried victimisation by political establishment in Delhi and Kolkata — was followed by similar allegation against another retired Supreme Court Judge.
In the latest incident, the stated ‘victim’ a Calcutta High Court advocate, lodged a police complaint with SDPO Vishnupur in Bankura district alleging that the said Judge had proposed to marry her through one of her woman colleagues and when she turned down the proposal “he had been regularly harassing me through some hired goons.”
While the police initially refused to accept her complaint, the woman sent it through registered post and requested the authorities to take action and provide her with police protection, a senior police officer said insisting the police would “also try to ascertain her mental state.”
The woman, was currently staying at Vishnupur her ancestral house, alleging she was feeling threatened to go to Kolkata for the fear of being killed, sources said adding even some relatives of the Judge were threatening her.
Interestingly, bringing into play the precedent created by the Supreme Court by instituting an inquiry in Justice Ganguly case, the woman has reportedly marked copies of the letter to the State Home Secretary and Chief Justice of India requesting for a similar inquiry by a panel of judges.
This, because she feels the accused Judge being “a person of contacts will thwart all probes,” police sources said.
The woman has written in the complaint as to how she has been attacked twice before by the alleged goons sent by the former Judge. “One I was attacked inside a bus while travelling to Vishnupur,” the police officers quoted the girl as stating.
Meanwhile, in a latest development after the resignation of Justice Ashok Ganguly, who was also a visiting faculty at the NUJS Kolkata, the alumni of the elite law institute has risen up in revolt against the university management complaining apathy towards handling sexual harassment-related cases.
The alumni has petitioned “about the sordid state of affairs” at the NUJS to Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam and alleged that the authorities have failed to take action either against Justice Ganguly or against another employee (an assistant registrar) charges with harassing a woman faculty member.
Inviting his intervention, the alumni has said, “In a recent case involving an allegation of sexual harassment by one employee against another the victim accused the VC of being soft on the complainant.” However, VC Ishwara Bhatt denied the allegations saying he was ready for probe.