Intern 1
“Last December was momentous for the feminist movement in the country—almost an entire population seemed to rise up spontaneously against the violence on women, and the injustices of a seemingly apathetic government. In the strange irony of situations that our world is replete with, the protests were in the backdrop of my own experience. In Delhi at that time, interning during the winter vacations of my final year in University, I dodged police barricades and fatigue to go to the assistance of a highly reputed, recently retired Supreme Court judge whom I was working under during my penultimate semester. For my supposed diligence, I was rewarded with sexual assault (not physically injurious, but nevertheless violating) from a man old enough to be my grandfather. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that long after I’d left the room, the memory remained, in fact, still remains, with me.” [Read the full statement here]
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Intern 2
“The funny part is, it was very likely that I would have been the person in [SJ]’s place. I’ve been at the receiving end of unsolicited sexual advance more than once, and so has she [SJ]. And we kept attributing all the signs of leeriness to our hypersensitivity to such situations, mistrusting our instincts. We discussed innocuously said off-colour remarks and dismissed their creepiness because we really respected him [the judge], and the possibility seemed at odds with everything we knew about him, his ideas about feminism, patriarchy, social justice.... In this case, we spoke to other women who had worked with him and found out that there was a history to such behaviour. (Perhaps it’s a psychological problem, who knows? Some neediness issues.) We also alerted some female senior faculty to the incident so that they would ensure that no female student was assigned work with him without being told to be on her guard.” [read the full comment here]
Sources: Journal of Indian Law and Society and Facebook
