UP Judge Wants Permission To ‘End Life’, Chief Justice Seeks Report

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud has asked for a report after an open letter – purportedly by a woman judge in Uttar Pradesh alleging sexual harassment by a senior and requesting permission to kill herself – went viral on social media.

“Kindly permit me to end my life in a dignified way. Let my life be – DISMISSED,” the woman judge from Banda wrote in the letter addressed to the Chief Justice, alleging sex harassment by a district judge and his associates during a stint in Barabanki.

“I have been sexually harassed to the very limit. I have been treated like utter garbage. I feel like an unwanted insect,” she said in the widely-circulated letter.

On the instructions of Chief Justice Chandrachud, the Supreme Court Secretary General Atul M Kurhekar wrote to the registrar general of the Allahabad High Court asking for a report by this morning on the status of all the complaints by the woman judge.

The Secretary General was informed on the phone last night that the acting Chief Justice of the High Court had also taken note of the open letter.

The woman judge said in her letter that a probe was ordered into her allegations after she filed a complaint with the Internal Complaints Committee of the High Court in July 2023, but the inquiry is “a farce and a sham”.

“The witnesses in the enquiry are immediate Subordinates of the District Judge. How the Committee expects the Witnesses to depose against their Boss is beyond my understanding,” she wrote.

She said that she had requested the transfer of the judge pending the inquiry to ensure fair investigation, but her petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court in “just eight seconds.”

“All I requested was that the District Judge be transferred during the pendency of the inquiry. The bare minimum prayer was not heeded to,” the letter said.

“I have no will to live anymore. I have been rendered to a Walking Corpse in the last year and a half. There is no purpose in carrying this soulless and lifeless body around anymore. There is no purpose left in my life,” the two-page letter said.