Chennai: Madras High Court yesterday issued notice to Tamil Nadu Government, the court Registrar General and the state Bar council on a PIL on ensuring safe working environment for women in the precincts of courts in the state.
A bench comprising Chief Justice R K Agrawal and Justice K. Ravichandra Babu issued notice to the state Home Secretary, who was impleaded as the third respondent by the court, the Registrar General and Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry returnable by two weeks.
Petitioner S Sathia Chandran, a practising advocate in the high court, prayed for necessary instructions/circulars and to frame rules/regulations to ensure a safe working environment for women in the precincts of the high court and sub-ordinate courts in the state.
He claimed that he came to know that the women who visited the courts in various roles such as litigants, advocates, staff, and journalists face the threat of sexual harassment at the hands of men.
Due to the fear of trauma of prosecuting the perpetrators of the sexual harassment, who are economically, politically and socially powerful and influential, the women continued to suffer in silence, he submitted.
Referring to the allegation by a former law intern against a retired Supreme Court Judge, the petitioner alleged that even before this, he had been hearing about the complaints of sexual harassment in the precincts of the high court and outside at the hands of a few fellow senior lawyers, high ranking officials and even Judges.
He further said that in the absence of any mechanism to deal with such complaints, serious offences of various types of sexual harassment were getting diluted and made to fade away only as corridor gossips, emboldening the perpetrators to commit more such offences.
Referring to several Supreme Court judgments, he said it was high time necessary instructions were issued in compliance with the law laid down by the apex court.
