In a shocking case of sexual harassment in the ranks of the higher judiciary a woman additional judge in Gwalior has resigned after alleging that she was sexually harassed by a judge in the Madhya Pradesh high court. According to a report in Times of India , the HC judge in question pestered his female colleague to visit his bungalow alone, perform an ‘item number’ for him and then transferred her to a remote district when she resisted his advances. Ironically the female judge was heading the Vishaka committee against sexual harassment in her district. The report says that the female judge could not take the harassment and then resigned to protect her “dignity, womanhood and self-esteem”. It adds that the revelations came out once the judge wrote a complaint to the Chief Justice of India RM Lodha, Supreme Court judges Justices H L Dattu, T S Thakur, Anil R Dave, Dipak Misra and Arun Misra, as well as the MP HC chief justice. The TOI report notes that the administrative judge “sent her a message through the district registrar to ‘perform dance on an item song’ at a function in his residence. When she didn’t turn up, he told her that he had “missed the opportunity of viewing a sexy and beautiful figure dancing on the floor and that he is desperate to see the same,” adds the TOI report. Facing constant harassment, and despite increasing her work hours, the judge was subject to intense scrutiny by the HC judge. The report adds she went to meet the judge along with her husband, but he had “asked her to meet him after 15 days” because he was not happy that she had turned up with her husband. However she was then given a transfer order. The report adds that the complaint has alleged, “The administrative judge, along with district judge and district judge (inspection), possibly made a false, frivolous, baseless and malicious reporting to the chief justice of MP and got me transferred on July 8, in the mid-academic session of my daughters to a remote place Sidhi by overruling the transfer policy of MP HC.” [caption id=“attachment_1590355” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Supreme Court of India is seen in this file photo. AFP[/caption] Later the judge mocked her, saying that this transfer was punishment for not visiting his bungalow. He had also allegedly threatened to destroy her career. She also says that the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Chief Justice had refused to meet her. She also told TOI, “If this is how a mother, sister and wife can be treated, who is herself no less than a judicial officer duty-bound to protect society and law, what constitutional goals are we serving?” The CJI has said that he will take note of the matter once the complaint is formally placed before him and has called the incident was ‘an unfortunate one.’ This is not the first instance of sexual harassment to hit the judiciary. Most recently two former Supreme Court judges (Justice Ganguly and Justice Swatanter Kumar) were accused by their interns of sexual harassment. While in the case of Justice Ganguly the court ruled that since he had retired at the time of the incident, the matter was out of its jurisdiction, in the case of Swatanter Kumar he had filed a defamation suit against the girl. Additionally in Justice Ganguly’s case the intern has refused to depose in front of the police. After the incidents, the SC had issued a notice that a permanent mechanism be set up for redressal of sexual harassment complaints against former and sitting judges in Supreme Court, high courts, tribunals and all quasi-judicial bodies. But now the latest complaint shows that sexual harassment in the judiciary is a bigger problem than what it appears to be. The fact that a female judge was subject to this kind of harassment, with demeaning requests of item numbers, shows that male judges who want to harass have very little cause to desist from such activities. Given how difficult it is impeach a judge in India ( for the complaint alone to be accepted by the parliament the resolution has to be signed by 100 Lok Sabha MPs or 50 Rajya Sabha MPs), the judge probably wasn’t too deterred by the existence of a sexual harassment complaints committee. Now that the complaint has come forward, it remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will deal with this, and whether it’s new mechanism will offer any respite to the woman judge in question.