"Judiciary Failed Me": Judge Resigns Over Senior's High Court Appointment

A woman civil judge resigned yesterday after a senior she accused of harassment and misconduct was appointed as the judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court recently.

"I am resigning from judicial service, not because I failed the institution but because the institution failed me," wrote Aditi Kumar Sharma, a junior division civil judge in Shahdol, in her resignation letter dated July 28 to the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Identifying herself as a judge "who dared to speak up against a senior judge wielding unaccountable power", she claimed that she was subjected to unrelenting harassment for years and that she followed every legitimate route, "hoping that if not justice, at least a hearing might be granted".

In her letter, she claimed that the man "who orchestrated my suffering was not questioned but rewarded, recommended, elevated. Given a pedestal instead of a summons".

The judicial officer claimed that she accused the judge with documented facts, but there was no inquiry, no notice and even no explanation was asked of him. "No inquiry. No notice. No hearing. No accountability - (He) is not titled justice, a cruel joke upon the very word".

"I was not seeking revenge. I was crying for justice - not just for myself, but for the institution I cherished and believed in even when it did not believe in me... I leave now, with wounds that no reinstatement, no compensation, no apology will ever heal. Let this letter haunt the files it enters," she added.

She said that she was signing off "not as an officer of the court, but as a victim of its silence". "I leave this institution with no medals, no celebration and no bitterness, only the bitter truth that the judiciary failed me. But worse - it failed itself," she wrote.

In 2023, the woman judge was terminated from service along with five other women judicial officers over their alleged unsatisfactory performance. The Supreme Court then took a suo motu cognizance of the termination.

On August 1, 2024, a full court of the Madhya Pradesh High Court reconsidered its earlier resolutions and decided to reinstate four officers-- Jyoti Varkade, Sushri Sonakshi Joshi, Sushri Priya Sharma and Rachna Atulkar Joshi -- on certain terms and conditions, leaving out the other two, Aditi Kumar Sharma and Sarita Chaudhary, from the exercise.

However, in a strong verdict on February 28, the top court termed Aditi Kumar Sharma's termination "arbitrary and illegal" and reinstated her.