A panel appointed by the Rajya Sabha has given a clean chit to a sitting judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court after probing charges of sexual harassment of a judicial officer against him. The report of the committee constituted under the Judges Inquiry Act, 1968 was tabled in the Rajya Sabha today.
The panel, comprising Supreme Court judge R Bhanumathi, Justice Manjula Chellur and jurist KK Venugopal, was set up in April 2015 by then Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari after admitting a motion supported by 58 members to impeach the judge.
A hundred parliamentarians of Lok Sabha or 50 members of the Rajya Sabha have to sign such a motion of impeachment for it to be accepted and taken up in the House.
The motion listed three "grounds of misconduct" for impeachment: "sexual harassment" of the woman judge; "victimisation" of the judge "for not submitting to his illegal and immoral demands", including, but not limited to, transferring her from Gwalior to Sidhi; and "misusing" his position as the administrative judge of the high court to use the subordinate judiciary to victimise the judge.
"The four instances of sexual harassment alleged by the complainant... are not proved beyond reasonable doubt... we hold that charge No 1 is not proved," the report said.
session. "In our view, it (transfer) was punitive". The report said under transfer for wrong reasons and at a time when her child was set to take Class 12 board exams, she had no option but to resign.
"...in the interest of justice, the complainant has to be re-instated back in the service, in case the complainant intends to re-join service. We are conscious that the above opinion is not within the purview of our reference," it said.
A total of 58 parliamentarians, including Digvijaya Singh of the Congress, Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M), Derek O'Brien of the TMC, and Ram Gopal Yadav and Jaya Bachchan of the Samajwadi Party had signed the impeachment motion.
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