The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain the plea of a senior Madhya Pradesh district judge seeking quashing of sexual harassment charges levelled against him by a woman judge, telling him to approach the high court instead.

Senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and R. Balasubramanyam had pleaded with the bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Surya Kant that “principles of natural justice” had been violated as the accused judge, Shambhoo Singh Raghuvanshi, had not been heard by the four different committees that had conducted inquiries over the past two years.

The apex court, however, refused to interfere with the proceedings at this stage.

The woman judge had lodged the complaint of sexual harassment at the workplace against Raghuvanshi on March 7, 2018.

According to the petition filed in the Supreme Court through advocate Sachin Sharma, Raghuvanshi, who had been the principal district judge, was transferred from Khandwa to Damoh pending the disciplinary proceedings against him.

The petition said that the report submitted by the gender sensitisation and internal complaints committee and the consequential issue of a showcause notice by Madhya Pradesh High Court on the administrative side for initiating further disciplinary inquiry was “arbitrary and illegal” as the panel had failed to examine the “conciliation” application filed by the woman judge herself.

Raghuvanshi had further pleaded that he had an unblemished career spanning over 32 years and is due to retire at the end of this year.

He also alleged that the inquiry and recording of statements were conducted on several occasions in his absence and that he was not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses.

“All these actions have been done at a time when the petitioner is in the zone of consideration for being considered for elevation,” the petition had said.