sexual harassment

Sexual harassment appears to be everywhere these days, yet it was always so. Complaints, on the other hand, seemed to be rarer only a few years ago.

Law student Aarushi Mahajan wrote a powerful piece in NLU Delhi’s Independent Student Newspaper Glasnost about her and other women’s experiences on the campus of one of India’s top national law schools.

Former iGate Technologies in-house lawyer sued the company and its global general counsel (GC), alleging that he and others had repeatedly sexually harassed and once sexually assaulted her.

Supreme Court justices SJ Mukhopadhaya and NV Ramana have set aside declined to interfere with a Calcutta high court order that declined to cancel the bail of former NUJS Kolkata assistant registrar Siddhartha Guha, who is accused of having sexually harassed another staff member at the college, reported the Times of India.

Correction: We understand that the Times of India story was erreneous and we regret republishing their report. The Supreme Court did not interfere with the lower court's order, but said on 11 November:

There is nothing on record to suggest that the petitioner brought to the notice of the High Court that the accused/Respondent No.2-Siddhartha Guha who has been granted bail is threatening the petitioner. In that view of the matter, we are not inclined to interfere with the impugned order refusing cancellation of bail but give liberty to the petitioner to move before the High Court for cancellation of bail, in case of threat given by accused-respondent No.2. If any such petition is filed for cancellation of bail on the ground of threat given by the accused respondent NO.2, the Court may consider the same uninfluenced by the earlier order passed by the High Court or this Court.

The alleged victim, represented by advocates Siddharth Dave and Phiroze Edulji, alleged before the apex court that Guha had threatened her with an acid attack, as set out in a police complaint. The Supreme Court told her to approach the high court with evidence of why Guha should not be granted bail.

This is a reminder for myself: a reminder that being aware of how I don’t want to be man-handled does not mean I am fussy, or hormonal, or (my favourite) “being such a girl”.

The Allahabad high court terminated 11 trainee judicial officers from the lower judicial service last week after a drunken brawl in Lucknow in which the 11 were involved, reported the Times of India.

The 11 had visited a restaurant on 7 August to celebrate the completion of their training on 8 August, had allegedly consumed liquor and then engaged in a scuffle with people present at the restaurant. The footage of this was recorded on the restaurant’s CCTV camera.

The HC’s administrative committee had already recommended the suspension of 20 trainee judges who were originally accused of misbehaviour, according to several local news sources, but the full court headed by chief justice DY Chandrachud decided to terminate the services of 11 out of those 20. The full court also transferred three additional directors at their institute, who had allegedly tried to hush up the incident.

A female trainee judge was the target of their misbehaviour in the inebriated condition, reported ENI.

Sessions court judge MT Gaikwad has been suspended in South Mumbai after a preliminary inquiry about a complaint from a female member of the court staff complained of his “inappropriate behaviour” - in particular, by staring at her in an offensive manner, reported the PTI. The preliminary inquiry was conducted by special judge SD Tulankar, with Gaikwad now facing a departmental inquiry.

The former Gwalior district judge who alleged she was sexually harassed by a high court judge who transferred her, said she would not cooperate with the panel set up to investigate her complaint until the panel is reconstituted.

The panel set up by Chief Justice of India RM Lodha to probe the allegations could not do its job while the judge she accused continued in his role because witnesses would not be able to depose freely, and one of the judges on the panel had transferred her before and could be biased, she wrote in a letter NDTV.

Her original account included reference to an inappropriate request the Madhya Pradesh high court judge had allegedly sent her via a court official.

Kian Ganz explains on Newslaundry how over the last week the papers have been happily running with a news story about how AK Ganguly, the former Supreme Court judge who had allegedly harassed one of his interns after retirement, with headlines such as “Ganguly gets Centre’s clean chit in intern case”.

The only problem: it never actually happened. Read the full article on Newslaundry that shows how badly they got it wrong.

Newschannel IndiaTV’s producers Rajat Sharma and Ritu Dhawan sent a defamation notice to their former employee Tanu Sharma who had made sexual harassment allegations against the channel and its senior executive Anita Sharma, reported the Caravan’s online publication, Vantage.

The notice states:{jcomments lock}

“The defamatory and vilification campaign […] is being carried out with an ulterior motive of reckoning vengeance against our clients. […] immediately stop such vilification and defamatory campaign [and on Newslaundry and www.aapkibaat.com to] immediately remove the objectionable articles,” “issue a public statement apologizing … and circulate the same on all platforms including online websites, social networking sites, twitter handle, facebook accounts and all print or digital media.”