Close on the heels of the Tehelka episode, where the founder Tarun Tejpal was caught for trying to sexually abuse a young journalist in the first week of November 2013, at a five star hotel in Goa, a lady intern accused Justice Ashok Kumar Ganguly, who delivered the 2G spectrum case judgment along with Justice G S Singhvi on Feb 2, 2012 of harassing her sexually. The Supreme Court then appointed a three-member committee to probe the allegations and identified A K Ganguly was the one who harassed her. He repeatedly denied all charges. He was indicted on 6 December 2013 by the committee, which agreed with the intern’s allegation that he had subjected her to “unwelcome sexual behavior” in December 2012. He resigned from the West Bengal Human Rights Commission on 6 January 2014 after the Union Cabinet decided to make a Presidential Reference on 2 January 2014 to the Supreme Court for his removal. But surprise, surprise, the intern never recorded her statement before the police and once he had been eased out of the post of Chairman, WBHRC, the case just fizzled out and he was acquitted. The woman was not acted upon for foisting false charges.

Fast forward to the present, the present Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi is also being accused of making sexual advances at a former junior court assistant, who said in her petition to 22 Supreme Court justices that her life had literally fallen apart since the incident[1]. Gogoi is about to rule on several important cases in the days and weeks to come and said that there is a conspiracy to de-stabilize the judiciary system of India before the cases are ruled on[2]. The CJI gave a fairly detailed rebuttal saying that the lady has a criminal background – she was in custody after accepting Rs.50,000 from a person on the assurance that she would find him a job at the Supreme Court. He added that her husband was making calls to the office of the CJI, demanding that his wife be re-instated or else… Now we know.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dr. Subramanian Swamy weighed in on this matter and observed that whenever judges are taking up high profile cases, they are being targeted. None of the allegations are ever taken to their logical conclusion as the idea is to taint the judge.

One new trend requires urgent attention: Targeting of judges who take up high voltage cases. None of the allegation is taken to its logical conclusion of being dismissed as scurrilous. The idea is to taint the judge.. This will destroy our judicial system — Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) April 21, 2019

We saw a similar thing happen with the previous CJI Dipak Misra too when the Opposition parties were trying to impeach the CJI!

References:

[1] India’s Chief Justice is Accused of Sexual Harassment – Apr 20, 2019, The New York Times

[2] CJI Ranjan Gogoi: Bigger forces behind affidavit against me just before important poll cases – Apr 20, 2019, The Times of India