FILE photo: Justice AK Ganguly
Justice AK Ganguly, accused of sexually harassing a law intern in December last year, told a panel of Supreme Court judges that the charges against him don't hold as stricter sexual harassment laws were not in place then.
"I say that accepting all allegations of sexual harassment made by the intern to be true (which is strongly denied by me), the incident allegedly took place in December when the sexual harassment Act was not enabled," Justice Ganguly, a former Supreme Court judge, said, the three-judge panel has noted in a report accessed exclusively by NDTV.
The nine-page report is likely to be included in a presidential reference that the government is preparing for Justice Ganguly's removal as the Chairperson of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission.
(Read)The Supreme Court panel, appointed to investigate the intern's allegations, has indicted the former judge for what it called "unwelcome behaviour" and "conduct of sexual nature." But it said it could take no action as Justice Ganguly had retired when the alleged assault took place.
The intern, in her signed statement to the panel, has given a detailed account of the harassment she alleges she suffered when she met Mr Ganguly at his request for work at a Delhi hotel on December, 24, 2012.
Only two months later, the government introduced a new set of tough laws to deal with crime against women, impelled by the unprecedented, nationwide protests that followed the brutal gang-rape of a young student on a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012.
The Supreme Court panel has said in its report that Justice Ganguly also argued that the Visakha guidelines on sexual harassment at the workplace did not apply in this case as the "Hon'ble Court is not the workplace of either the intern or the judge who retired".
There has been widespread demand that Justice Ganguly be sacked; he has vehemently denied the allegations against him and has refused to resign.