A Delhi court on Friday dismissed a plea to cancel the bail of a former woman employee of the Supreme Court, who had accused the Chief Justice of India of sexual harassment, in a case of alleged cheating and criminal intimidation.
A three-member in-house inquiry committee of the apex court, headed by Justice S.A. Bobde, had in May this year given a clean chit to Justice Ranjan Gogoi, saying it had “found no substance” in the woman’s allegations.
The woman, who alleges she was sacked last December for resisting the Chief Justice’s alleged advances, had earlier walked out of the panel’s third hearing, complaining about the absence of any external member and saying she was not being allowed a lawyer.
On Friday, chief metropolitan magistrate Manish Khurana dismissed Delhi police’s pending application for cancellation of her bail after the woman’s lawyer, V.K. Ohri, told him the relevant notice could not be served on the complainant despite several attempts.
“Perusal of the record reveals that the complainant has not been appearing in this case and the notice issued to him could not be served. In these circumstances, no fruitful purpose will be served by keeping the application for cancellation of bail of accused pending and the same is accordingly dismissed,” the court said.
Naveen Kumar, a resident of Jhajjar in Haryana, has accused the woman of cheating him out of Rs 50,000 by promising him a job at the Supreme Court.
An FIR was lodged at Tilak Marg police station here on March 3, and the woman was arrested on March 10. She received bail on March 12.
The Delhi police sought cancellation of the bail after Kumar allegedly claimed the woman and her husband had threatened him. The police told the court that Haryana police had been asked to protect Kumar.
In April, the woman sent a sworn affidavit to the residences of 22 apex court judges levelling the allegations against Justice Gogoi.
According to Kumar, he had met the woman through a common friend, Mansha Ram, in June 2017 and that she told him she was the personal assistant of an apex court judge.
She allegedly promised to get him a job with the apex court as a process server or a Class IV employee in a month and a half if he paid her Rs 10 lakh. He claims he paid her Rs 50,000.
On March 14, Delhi police’s crime branch took up the investigation.