MP woman judge resigns after her senior, whom she accused of harassment, gets HC appointment

"I am resigning from judicial service, not because I failed the institution but because the institution failed me,"  Aditi Kumar Sharma, a junior division civil judge in Shahdol, wrote in her resignation letter to the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Stating that she was a judge "who dared to speak up against a senior judge wielding unaccountable power", Aditi claimed that she was subjected to unrelenting harassment for years.

She claimed to have followed every legitimate route, "hoping that if not justice, at least a hearing might be granted".

In her letter, she claimed that the man "who orchestrated my suffering was not questioned but rewarded, recommended, elevated. Given a pedestal instead of a summons".

She claimed to have accused the judge with documented facts, but there was no inquiry, no notice and even no explanation was asked of him.

"No inquiry. No notice. No hearing. No accountability - (He) is not titled justice, a cruel joke upon the very word," her letter stated.

"I was not seeking revenge. I was crying for justice - not just for myself, but for the institution I cherished and believed in even when it did not believe in me... I leave now, with wounds that no reinstatement, no compensation, no apology will ever heal. Let this letter haunt the files it enters," she wrote.

She said that she was resigning "not as an officer of the court, but as a victim of its silence".

"I leave this institution with no medals, no celebration and no bitterness, only the bitter truth that the judiciary failed me. But worse - it failed itself," she wrote.