Lawyer accuses former SC judge of sexually harassing her

A recent blog post by a woman lawyer, where she has accused of a retired Supreme Court judge of sexually harassing her while she was an intern with him, has caused quite a sensation online. The blog post by Stella James, who graduated from Kolkata’s National University of Juridical Sciences, wrote that the incident took place last December, during the time of the Delhi gang-rape protests. She wrote in her blog, “Last December was momentous for the feminist movement in the country – almost an entire population seemed to rise up spontaneously against the violence on women, and the injustices of a seemingly apathetic government. In the strange irony of situations that our world is replete with, the protests were the backdrop of my own experience. [caption id=“attachment_1205031” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Supreme Court of India is seen in this file photo. Image used for representational purpose only. AFP[/caption] In Delhi at that time, interning during the winter vacations of my final year in University, I dodged police barricades and fatigue to go to the assistance of a highly reputed, recently retired Supreme Court judge whom I was working under during my penultimate semester. For my supposed diligence, I was rewarded with sexual assault (not physically injurious, but nevertheless violating) from a man old enough to be my grandfather. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that long after I’d left the room, the memory remained, in fact, still remains, with me.” You can read the entire blog post here. James also wrote that she didn’t file a legal complaint despite the fact that, “Five years of law school had taught me to look to the law for all solutions – even where I knew that the law was hopelessly inadequate – and my reluctance to wage a legal battle against the judge left me feeling cowardly.” She wrote that while she “bore no real ill-will towards the man,” she felt that she had a responsibility to speak about the incident to ensure that other girls don’t face a similar problem. James who has also been interviewed by LegallyIndia website, after she wrote the blog post and she told the website that even if she wanted to take legal recourse, it would probably not have been possible. “There were no other witnesses, it was just me. It was a hotel room, [people] saw me walking in voluntarily, saw me walking out very calmly. I didn’t even walk out [with] fear. At that moment I felt I needed to walk out very calmly. I never mentioned anything the same day to anybody,” she told LegallyIndia. James also told the website that the Supreme Court’s recently started sexual harassment cell was unlikely to improve matters. “It is often one person’s word against another person’s word, and a lot of people tend not to take the word of a young lawyer against a senior advocate who’s made his reputation for 10 to 15 years," she says.

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Lawyer accuses former SC judge of sexually harassing her

A recent blogpost by a female lawyer where she has accused of a now-retired Supreme Court judge of sexually harassing her while she was an intern with him has caused quite a sensation online.

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