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MP judge sexual harassment: insufficient evidence, accused judge 'evasive about facts'

Sexual harassment wasn’t proved against Madhya Pradesh high court judge SK Gangele, reported an ad hoc in-house committee of the Supreme Court, after examining charges leveled against him by a former lower court judge. The Supreme Court accepted this finding, reported the Express.

The Supreme Court’s administrative side was dealing with the sexual harassment complaint, which has not yet been filed before the judiciary.

The complainant, a female former district and sessions judge in Gwalior, had allegedly quit as a judge due to harassment by Gangele and abetment of the harassment by three other judges. She had alleged that Gangele, had harassed her by asking her to dance at a function and saying “he missed the opportunity of viewing a sexy and beautiful figure dancing on the floor”.

About the abettors she had alleged that they interfered in her day to day activities.

She said she had resigned as a judge to protect her “dignity, womanhood and self-esteem”.

The in-house committee of the SC, which consisted of Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud, Delhi High Court Chief Justice G Rohini and Rajasthan High Court judge Ajay Rastogi, submitted their report on 2 July.

The committee had observed that there was insufficient material to establish the charge of sexual harassment and that “complainant herself in regard to the three alleged incidents (of sexual harassment) is riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions”.

However, it had added in its report, that justice Gangele was “ambivalent and evasive about facts which are within his knowledge”, for instance the incidents of harassment by the deputy registrar.

The committee also reported its displeasure with Justice Gangele for hosting a lavish wedding anniversary party and inviting a number of persons from judiciary, bureaucracy and police:

“The event on 11 December 2013 was a public event — perhaps unabashedly so, with sitting judges of the High Court, commissioners, collectors, senior police officials, judges both from the district judiciary and the High Court and officials from the registry in attendance. Whether such a public event to mark a wedding anniversary would at all fit in with the norms of propriety and dignity which a High Court judge is expected to follow is not a matter on which this committee needs to hazard an answer...”

“Such events are best observed in a closely-knit group of family and friends. The High Court exercises power of judicial review over the acts and conduct of police officials, the district administration and the executive. A public association of a judge of the High Court at such a personal social event is liable to give rise to misgivings when the conduct of the officials is under scrutiny before the court.”

A separate three-member panel, set up by vice president and Rajya Sabha chairperson Hamid Ansari on the written plea of 58 parliamentary members seeking justice Gangele’s impeachment, is also probing the sexual harassment allegation against him, according to the Express.

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