A junior division civil judge in Madhya Pradesh resigned on Monday, days after a senior judicial officer—whom she had earlier accused of harassment and misconduct—was elevated as a judge in the State High Court.
In her resignation letter dated July 28 to the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Aditi Kumar Sharma, the junior division civil judge in Shahdol wrote, “I am resigning from judicial service, not because I failed the institution but because the institution failed me.”
The woman judge claimed that she was subjected to unrelenting harassment for years and that she followed every legitimate route, “hoping that if not justice, at least a hearing might be granted.”
In her letter, Sharma claimed that the man “who orchestrated my suffering was not questioned but rewarded, recommended, elevated. Given a pedestal instead of a summons.”
The judicial officer said that she accused the judge with documented facts, but there was no inquiry, no notice, and neither an 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,” she said.
“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 added.
She said that she was signing off “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.
In 2023, the woman judge was dismissed from service along with five others by the Madhya Pradesh High Court over alleged unsatisfactory performance. The Supreme Court later took suo motu cognizance of the matter.
On August 1, 2024, a full bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court reviewed its earlier decisions and reinstated four of the six officers—Jyoti Varkade, Sonakshi Joshi, Priya Sharma, and Rachna Atulkar Joshi—on specific terms and conditions.
However, two officers, Aditi Kumar Sharma and Sarita Chaudhary, were excluded from the reinstatement.
In a verdict, delivered earlier this year on February 28, the Supreme Court termed Sharma’s dismissal “arbitrary and illegal,” and ordered her reinstatement.
