The petition filed by the woman lawyer seeks the establishment of a ‘permanent mechanism’ to look into complaints against judicial officers.
New Delhi: The four original petitioners in the Supreme Court’s landmark Vishaka judgment have asked the court to include them in the ongoing sexual harassment case filed by a woman lawyer against a former Supreme Court judge.
The judge, who has obtained a Delhi high court injunction against reporting of the case, was a sitting Supreme Court judge and the lawyer was his intern when she says the encounter took place in May 2011. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the lawyer’s petition and has issued notices to the former judge, the centre and the attorney general.
Filed on 15 January by Kamini Jaiswal and Vrinda Grover for the four petitioners—Vishaka, Women’s Rehabilitation Group, Jagori and Kali for Women—the petition wants the apex court to include them in the petition filed by the woman lawyer known only as “Ms X” against the former judge. As the original petitioners in the 1997 Vishaka case, they believe their intervention will be helpful in finding “suitable methods for realization of the true concept of ‘gender equality’; and to prevent sexual harassment of working women in all workplaces”.
The petition filed by the woman lawyer seeks the establishment of a “permanent mechanism” to look into complaints against judicial officers.
“Women have relied and continue to rely on the judiciary to redress their many problems,” Grover told Mint. “It is therefore imperative that the dignity of the judiciary is maintained.”
Moreover, say the four petitioners, the legal profession by its very nature requires young lawyers to be mentored and trained. The last two decades have seen an inordinate rise in the number of women entering the legal profession. Their right to work in an environment free of sexual harassment or intimidation is crucial.
The intern’s complaint is the second such complaint in recent times against former Supreme Court judges. Earlier, a three-judge Supreme Court panel found evidence of wrongdoing against justice A.K. Ganguly but said it could not take action as the encounter took place after his retirement as a judge. Amid the outrage that followed, Ganguly resigned as head of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission.
The Supreme Court has now asked the attorney general as well as senior lawyer Fali Nariman to suggest a permanent mechanism that will examine such complaints. Reminding the court of their path-breaking work in Vishaka, the four petitioners say, “they are keen that protection and redress awarded by Vishaka is available to all working women”. In its 1997 Vishaka judgment, the Supreme Court had acknowledged that the civil and penal laws at that time had no redress for the protection of women from sexual harassment in the workplace. It made it mandatory for all employers to set up internal committees that would look into such complaints. Ironically, the Supreme Court itself had no such committee until last year.
In the wake of the December 2012 protests following the gang-rape and subsequent death of a young student in Delhi, the government passed more stringent measures covering a variety of crimes against women, including the wordy Gender Sensitisation and Sexual Harassment of Women at the Supreme Court of India (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Regulations, 2013. Under its provisions, all women, whether employed by the court or not, are afforded protection within the precincts of the Supreme Court.
The Vishaka judgment followed the 1992 brutal gang-rape of a grassroots worker, Bhanwari Devi, of the Women’s Development Project. Acquitting her rapists in 1995, the trial court had declared that the rapists were “respectable persons of a high caste who could not have raped a lower caste woman”. The appeal against the acquittals has yet to be decided by the Rajasthan high court.
Vishaka is a Jaipur-based social group that works in the area of women’s education and research.
Also based in Jaipur, the Women’s Rehabilitation Group works on economic empowerment issues. Jagori is a women’s rights organization based in Delhi. Established in 1984, Kali for Women is India’s first feminist publishing house.
The next hearing on the intern’s sexual harassment case is scheduled for 14 February.