It is not for the first time that any CJI is facing such allegations, earlier CJI Ganguly too had faced such allegations.
“I am an officer of this Court, I was also under attack by a lawyer for defending the government. I don’t want to mention the name of the lawyer“, CJI said.
“We are not passing any judicial order at this moment. We however ask media to show restraint, responsibility and wisdom so that independence of judiciary is not affected by baseless allegations“, the Court said.
Has honourable court already assumed that said allegations are baseless?
Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said, in an urgent Supreme Court hearing on Saturday morning, that charges of sexual harassment against him will be examined by other senior judges and not by himself and labelled the allegations as a threat to judiciary and “a conspiracy” against it. The session was convened following charges of sexual harassment levelled against the CJI by a former SC staffer, who sent a signed affidavit to all 22 judges of the court, alleging that she was harassed by Gogoi in October.
A bench was hurriedly constituted after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned online media reports of a sexual harassment complaint made by a former junior assistant of Justice Gogoi’s before a Supreme Court official on Saturday. The woman had sent an affidavit to all 22 judges of the court on 19 April, 2019. The alleged incident occurred in October 2018. The woman, in her affidavit, said she has since been dismissed from service and claimed to have faced harassment on several other fronts.
The registry came out with the notice that a special bench has been constituted to deal with the “matter of great public importance” touching upon the independence of judiciary. The special bench comprising Gogoi and Justices Arun Mishra and Sanjeev Khanna sat at 10.30 am.
Gogoi said the independence of the judiciary was under “very, very serious threat” and there is a “larger conspiracy” to destabilise the judiciary. “There is a bigger force behind the woman who made sexual harassment charges,” ANI reported the Chief Justice as having said.
CNN News18 legal editor Utkarsh Anand, reporting from the court, tweeted that Gogoi noted having been “extremely hurt” by the allegation. “My peon has more assets and money than me,” Gogoi said, noting that it was unbelievable that he was on the receiving end of such allegations after 20 years of “selfless service”.
“Good people will never become judges if this is how they are targeted. There’s nothing more valuable than honour for me. And I had to constitute this bench to say this from the highest seat,” Gogoi was reported saying.
Anand also tweeted the reply by the Supreme Court Secretary General Sanjeev Sudhakar Kalgaonkar to four media houses on behalf of Gogoi.
“The allegations regarding 11 October 2018, as well as other allegations as can be discerned from your emails, are completely and absolutely false and scurrilous and are totally denied,” Kalgaonkar wrote in the reply.
