Another SC intern faces sexual harassment by judge

Another allegation of sexual harassment against a Supreme Court judge, who has since retired, has surfaced with a second law intern levelling a similar charge that he had misbehaved with her.

The second intern narrated her ordeal on a social networking site on November 11 under her own name but the comments have now been removed from it, reported the website Legally India, which first came out with the fresh allegation.

In a discussion, the website said, the woman, who also came from NUJS, a premier Law school in Kolkata like the first intern, wrote in a Facebook comment that she herself had been at the receiving end of "unsolicited sexual advance more than once".

"However, in the last year alone, I've been privy to three different instances of sexual harassment and what the women went through... very often at the hands of their bosses or someone in a position of power over them," the website quoted her as saying.

She also said when she confronted the then sitting judge of the apex court with the allegation of the intern, on whose charges, the Supreme Court has formed a three-judge committee to probe into it, he promised that he would never misbehave with another woman.

"He (judge) promised, incidentally, that he would never misbehave with another lady. Maybe it's naivete to believe him. Maybe it's just youthful optimism. Being brave is tougher than it appears on the face of it, no? The first intern has oodles of courage," the website claimed about the woman lawyer having written in the social website.

The startling allegation of sexual harassment was first made against the unnamed retired judge by a woman intern on a her blog on November 6 in which she had accused the judge of misbehaving with her in a hotel room last December when the nation was grappling with the gangrape of a woman in the capital.

The allegation was raised in the apex court before Chief Justice P Sathasivam who constituted a three-judge committee to go into the charge of the woman and had observed that "in the cases of sexual harassment, we cannot take it lightly."