In The Mood For Reason

The interview was not to be. “Justice Ganguly is usually extremely punctual...,” a senior colleague of A.K. Ganguly, the chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission, tells us. We are at WBHRC’s Calcutta Office. It’s 1:30 pm. We had an appointment with Justice Ganguly at 11:30 am. “His life has changed after the allegations were made.... Every day he has to wade through hundreds of protestors demanding his resignation as he enters office. The media is hounding him. Today a group of women was brandishing shoes, brooms and shouting slogans.... And press photographers were there, ready to capture his exasperated expression. We dissuaded him from coming in. He feels extremely heckled.”

Indeed, Justice Ganguly has been in the eye of a storm ever since his name was made public as the retired Supreme Court Judge who a law intern accused anonymously in an online blog of sexually harassing her in a hotel room in New Delhi on the night of December 24, 2012. Since then, angry voices demanding punishment for him and justice for the victim have been pouring forth. And politicians, the press, the general public and legal professionals such as additional solicitor general Indira Jaising have all spoken out. When we spoke to Justice Ganguly on his mobile, he was still at his home. “I cannot meet you today,” he said. He sounded exhausted.

In Calcutta, among those to most vociferously bay for his blood is the ruling party, Trinamool Congress. From CM Mamata Banerjee, who wrote to the president demanding that action be initiated to sack him as WBHRC chairman, to TMC MPs Derek O’Brien and Kalyan Bandyopadhyay. Speaking to Outlook, Bandyopadhyay, himself an advocate, said, “It is a matter of shame that the head of a body like the WBHRC stands accused in such a heinous crime. This is why we are demanding that he immediately step down.” In an open letter addressed to Justice Ganguly, TMC general secretary Mahua Moitro urged him thus: “For the last time, Sir, resign!”

But then, the brickbats tell only one side of the story. In recent weeks, many voices of support for him too have emerged. Among them are members of the CPI(M), who see in the TMC demand for Justice Ganguly’s resignation “a political expediency”. While careful not to dismiss the allegations by the law intern, the CPI(M)’s Mohammed Selim told Outlook that the TMC may be targeting Ganguly, as the WBHRC under him urged the state government to compensate victims of alleged human rights violations (see In A Negative Frame, Outlook, Dec 16). Furthermore, on December 18, even as the protests raged against Justice Ganguly throughout the city, Calcutta High Court lawyers took out a rally in support of the besieged former SC justice. The reasons for extending their support were varied.

Lawyer and former Calcutta mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said, “If people in high offices are forced to resign at every complaint made against them, who will work? It will set a bad precedence if Justice Ganguly is coerced to resign by such character assassination.” While it could be debated why persons in high office should not be made to step down if they stand accused of committing a crime such as sexual assault, legal experts argue that such resignations were dependant on various factors. (See box). Most ‘supporters’ of Justice Ganguly claim that they are not dismissing the allegations, but merely demanding that he be judged according to the laws of the land. “My position is very clear,” said former speaker Somnath Chatterjee. “I am not for once saying that the allegations against him are false. What I am saying is that we don’t know what exactly has happened until he has been tried in a court of law.... Until he is proven guilty, he is innocent.... Only the conviction of a court of law can remove him,” Chatterjee explained.

There have also been protests in Cal­cutta demanding the resignation of the VC of Visva Bharati University, Sushanta Dutta Gupta, after a recent RTI report rev­ealed that he was appointed even after being accused in 2005 of sexual harassment by a woman colleague when he was director of Satyendra Nath Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences.