Judging (Mahesh)

INTRODUCTION
The Indian Judicial System occupies among the trinity, the highest place in people’s conscience
and confidence. The judiciary is looked upon as the last Bastian of hope when other government
machinery fails to do their jobs. The trust and faith of the people of India is a sine qua non for the
judiciary to be running successfully. However, this high pedestal that we have put the Supreme
men on has started to deter over the years. Its high time we realize the men who we treat as
demigods are just human beings who are appointed to deliver justice, and justice being the
foremost human right available to humans must be delivered with utmost integrity and fairness.
Over the years Favouritism, Nepotism, Corruption, and bribery have crept their way into the
judicial system and have slowly made a permanent home, which is protected by the weapon of
Contempt of Court and Unaccountability. Among all the various issues about the judiciary,
Judicial Accountability has been on the minds of a lot of legislators and activists. The Indian
Constitution is such that the Executive is made accountable to the Parliament and the parliament
to the People, and Judiciary has been positioned at such a high and dignified position that its
accountability has not been fixed by the. The framers of our constitution have laid down the
constitutional jurisprudence for our judicial power but the enactment of accountability has not
been designed with a sense of principle pragmatism. The Constituent Assembly debates have
witnessed the wisdom of the drafters in multiple provisions but judicial independence has been
the priority in drafting the Constitution so much that judicial Accountability was not paid a head
to or it can be said that Judges were expected to be of high morals that there was no need to fix
their accountability. Self-regulation and Self constraints was what was expected out of the
Judges. As a result, lot of misconduct and crimes of judges go undetected and as so unpunished.
The cult and the robe must yield to the command of democratic discipline. With the recent
events of corruption in the judiciary and increasing, sexual harassment charges against judges
and Chief Justice (Ranjan Gogoi) disciplining the judges is a functional imperative that cannot be
jettisoned only to defend judicial prestige.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND JUDICIAL SYSTEM
Another growing concern in the Indian Judicial System is the sexual harassment that takes place
in the judicial office. The recent event that was taken place at the CJI office has brought
limelight on this matter. Even judges are mortals when it comes to sexual harassment at the
workplace, What brings to my notice is that judges have themselves put in guidelines in the
Vishaka judgment about how a sexual harassment matter needs to be handled but nor have they
followed it themselves nor is there any matter in public about how the issues have been dealt
with. Sexual harassment has a history in the judicial office, in 2002 Justice Arun Madan had
asked a Jodhpur based doctor for sexual favours to ‘fix’ the case in her favour Shortly after
which an inquiry committee headed by then chief justice C.B. Pattanaik found him guilty of
asking sexual favours to Sunita Malviya. However, even on finding prima facie evidence against
Justice Madan the chief justice did not take any action against him. During the inquiry, they
found out that the judge has also had corruption charges against him, and hence a further inquiry
into the corruption will be held against him. For which till date we have no hearing from. There
has been no inquiry or any reporting of such inquiry that took place justice C.B. Pattanaik retired
and he was successes by Justice Khare for which no news was seen anywhere, once again the
case was not spoken or heard about. In 2012 Justice A.K Ganguly was involved in a sexual
harassment case against an intern of NUJS Calcutta. The Supreme Court panel that was
constituted to look into the probe of sexual harassment had found the Former judge guilty of
unwelcome behavior (unwelcomed verbal and non-verbal conduct of sexual nature) towards the
intern. The panel stated that no further action could be taken as nor is the intern a court employee
and now the judge has retired. Are the judges any different when it comes to sexual harassment
then why are such double standards seen in the judiciary? Why are their guidelines of Vishaka
judgment not followed by the judiciary? Is a question that lingers in every common man’s head?
Recently a case that has again brought the judiciary under the limelight for the wrong reasons is
the sexual harassment case against the Chief Justice of India. The Chief Justice of India Justice
Ranjan Gogoi was accused of sexually harassing a women employee in the Supreme Court. The
woman employee accused the chief justice of sexually harassing her when she was working for
him. He held her from the waist and demanded sexual favors, and when so denied she and her
family were victimized and false cases were put against them. She was also often transferred
from one place to another which took a toll on her. Soon as the allegation was out in public and a
complaint was launched. A lot of things went haywire from her husband and brother in law who
was working as head constables being suspended to her losing her job. The woman claimed that
this incident has brought her down mentally, physically and emotionally. Soon an in house
committee was set up and no procedure of the Vishaka guidelines was followed. This in-house
committee being set up was a complete No-No for a lot of people who even knew the law and
out and belonged to the legal world. A question of judicial independence being threatened was
raised but it was just a provocation to hide judicial accountability. Is getting justice in India so
difficult? Isn’t law equal for everyone?
In the case of Sexual Harassment case against Chief Justice of India (CJI), Complainant argued
that ‘she has a right to copy of Bobde panel report.’
The decision of report was not made public by committee was based on the judgment of Indira
Jaising v Supreme Court of India. This judgment states that in-house procedure has been
adopted for inquiry to be made by the peers of judges in case of a complaint against the Chief
Justices or Judges of the High Court in order to find out truth of the imputation made in the
complaint. That in-house inquiry is for the purpose of his (CJI’s) own information and
satisfaction.

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INTRODUCTION

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