The Supreme Court three-member panel constituted to inquire into sexual harassment allegations against Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has issued notice to the woman, who levelled the allegations.
The panel headed by Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising of Justices N.V. Ramana and Indira Banerjee, has asked the woman to be present on April 26, 2019, the first day of the hearing.
The panel has also asked the apex court secretary general to be ready with all the documents and materials on the date of the hearing.
"This is going to be an in-house procedure which does not contemplate representation of advocate on behalf of parties. It is not a formal judicial proceeding," Justice Bobde told the PTI.
He clarified that there is no time frame to complete the inquiry and future course of action will depend on "what comes out of the inquiry" which will be "confidential".
The three-member panel was constituted on April 23, 2019, after much criticism from several quarters about the decision of the CJI-led Bench to deal with the issue on judicial side suo moto.
SCBA and Supreme Court AoR association had also objected to the hearing and called for a probe by Full Court.
This has led to the constitution of a new three judges Bench comprising of JusticesArun Mishra, Rohinton Nariman and Deepak Gupta to look into the matter. The Bench had issued notice to advocate Utsav Bains who claimed that he was offered a bribe of Rs.1.5 crores by SC 'fixers' to frame sexual harassment allegations against the CJI.
