In a searing act of protest, Madhya Pradesh woman judge Aditi Gajendra Sharma has tendered her resignation, accusing the judiciary of institutional betrayal following the elevation of a senior district judge—Rajesh Kumar Gupta, whom she had earlier accused of caste-based harassment, abuse of authority, and systemic retaliation. Her resignation letter, filled with powerful language and an unmistakable tone of anguish and disillusionment, indicts the judiciary for failing to protect one of its own.
The resignation comes a day after the union government, on July 29, 2025, notified Gupta’s appointment as a judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court for a two-year term. This appointment was made despite Sharma’s formal representations to the Supreme Court Collegium, the President of India, the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Chief Justice of the MP High Court, opposing his elevation. Sharma had submitted that Gupta had subjected her to continued humiliation, discrimination, and casteist behaviour when he was her administrative superior.
A resignation letter that reads like an indictment
In her resignation, accessed and reported by The Print, Sharma declared she was resigning with the “ache of betrayal — not at the hands of a criminal or an accused, but at the hands of the very system I swore to serve.” She described being subjected to “unrelenting harassment, not merely of the body or the mind, but of my dignity, my voice, and my very existence as a woman judge who dared to speak up.”
Rejecting the notion that her resignation was an act of personal defeat, Sharma wrote, as reported by Hindustan Times, “I am resigning from judicial service, not because I failed the institution, but because the institution has failed me.” Her words were not just personal; they carried an institutional warning: “Let this letter haunt the files it enters. Let it whisper in the hallways where silence once reigned.”
Allegations ignored, harassment unchecked
Sharma’s allegations were not anonymous, nor unsupported. As The Print and Hindustan Times both confirm, she made detailed and documented complaints against Gupta—including incidents of public humiliation, caste-based insults, and interference in her professional assessments. She alleged that Gupta and his wife not only demeaned her, but also sought to control her social interactions, particularly objecting to her friendship with their daughter.
In her petition before the Supreme Court, filed earlier this year, Sharma accused Gupta of abusing his administrative position to downgrade her performance ratings and creating a hostile work environment during her tenure as a trainee judge. The harassment, she claimed, extended to personal insults and attempts to damage her reputation.
Yet, despite multiple representations, Sharma states there was no inquiry, no notice, no opportunity to be heard—a complete abandonment of even the most basic tenets of natural justice. “The same judiciary that sermonizes about transparency from the bench failed to even follow the basic tenets of natural justice within its own halls,” her letter reads, as per The Print.
A troubling elevation amid allegations
Notably, Gupta’s elevation had previously been blocked by the Supreme Court Collegium in 2023, headed by then CJI D.Y. Chandrachud, after it received Sharma’s and other complaints. The file was returned to the Madhya Pradesh High Court for further inquiry. However, after what appears to be a perfunctory probe, where Sharma was never even called to testify, according to The Print, Gupta was given a clean chit and his name re-sent for reconsideration in April 2025.
ThePrint also reported that Gupta faced multiple complaints from other judicial officers, including a Dalit judge who accused him of casteist harassment, and another senior judge who alleged intimidation and derogatory remarks about High Court judges. None of these complaints, Sharma notes in her resignation, were adequately investigated.
Supreme Court had earlier reinstated Sharma
In February 2025, Sharma won a significant legal victory when the Supreme Court set aside her 2023 dismissal, calling it “punitive, arbitrary and illegal.” A bench led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna noted that her appraisal had ignored critical factors, including a miscarriage and long COVID-related complications. The judgment emphasised institutional responsibility in supporting women judges, particularly during health crises or maternity.
Yet even after her reinstatement, Sharma said she continued to face subtle retaliation, including an “advisory” from the HC to mend her behaviour. Her attempts to convert her earlier complaint into a formal grievance were met with silence.
A system that rewards power, not truth
Throughout her letter, Sharma reiterates that her protest is not about revenge, but about accountability. “. Shri Rajesh Kumar Gupta who orchestrated my suffering was not questioned – was rewarded. Recommended. Elevated. Given a pedestal instead of a summons. Shri Rajesh Kumar Gupta the man I accused not lightly, not anonymously, but with documented facts and the raw courage only a wounded woman can Summon was not even asked to explain. No inquiry. No notice. No hearing. No accountability—is now titled Justice, a cruel joke upon the very word,” she wrote, as per ThePrint.
In a scathing indictment of the collegium system, she warned that rewarding impunity sends a chilling message to other whistleblowers within the judiciary. “In that silence, I saw the brutal truth of our times that integrity is optional, power is protection, and those who speak the truth are punished more severely than those who violate it,” she wrote. “The same institution that teaches equality before law handpicked power over truth.”
Senior Advocate Indira Jaising: A structural betrayal
Senior Advocate Indira Jaising, who represented Sharma in her SC challenge against dismissal, told ThePrint: that this is not the first time she was dealing with a case where a woman judge has been forced to resign. She added: “As she said, ‘the judiciary’s daughters’ have been let down by the judiciary itself. I agree. There is something very wrong with the process of appointing judges of the high court behind closed doors. Surprisingly, the judiciary and the government are on the same page”
Jaising argued that closed-door appointments without adequate scrutiny of complaints were symptomatic of institutional decay. She said, “We lost a very good judicial officer with an unblemished record of service. She won in the judicial side but lost on the administrative side.”
A call for institutional introspection
Sharma’s resignation is not merely a personal exit—it is a formal indictment of the judiciary’s failure to uphold its own principles. She closes her letter with piercing words:
“I leave now, with wounds that no reinstatement, no compensation, no apology will ever heal—but also with my truth intact. Let this letter haunt the files it enters. Let it whisper in the hallways where silence once reigned. Let it live longer than the reputations hastily protected, and the wrongs quietly buried.
I sign off not as an officer of the court, but as a victim of its silence.
Where were the rules then? Where was the revered transparency then?
You refused to protect one of your own.
You refused to uphold the principles you preach.
You refused to be just where it mattered the most.
And if this does not shake your conscience, then perhaps the rot runs deeper than we dare admit.
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.
This letter of resignation is not closure. It is a statement of protest. Let it remain in your archives as a reminder that there once was a woman judge in Madhya Pradesh who gave her all to justice, and was broken by the system that preached it the loudest.
And if even one judge, one registrar, one member of the Collegium reads this and feels unease then perhaps, my voice has done more justice than my robe ever could.”
Her act—bold, painful, and unflinchingly honest—now stands as a testament to how women in the judiciary are treated. It raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of appointments, the erasure of women’s voices in power structures, and the danger of silencing dissent through procedural opacity.
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Surviving Communal Wrath: Women who have defied the silence, demanded accountability from the state