December 24, 2018:

On Monday, Mukul Mudgal has been accused by a family friend of forcing himself on her in the 1990s.

The former judge though had vehemently denied it.

On a winter night in the early 1990s, Mukul Mudgal, who would go on to become chief justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, allegedly waited in the parking lot of a house in A Block in Delhi's upscale Nizamuddin East for a woman he knew through her cousin.

She said she emerged some time later from a Maruti 800 — having just driven back from a friend's house — and was politely asked for a cup of coffee by Mudgal. It was around 11 pm, an unusual hour to be asking for coffee, but choosing not to dwell upon it, she let Mudgal in.

'I wasn't pleased about it, and that must have been some kind of basic instinct that I didn't know how to read,' the woman, 59, told ThePrint, insisting that only Mudgal be named.

Mudgal and she had apparently been well-acquainted with one another since her cousin married a relative of his. She worked in a design firm and lived alone. But their relationship was certainly not one that warranted spontaneous visits late at night, she recalled.

'We weren't ever taught that when a man asks to come into your home at 11 at night, and you don't want him there, you say no.'

Like countless other Indian women, lines of consent were never discussed in her home growing up, let alone a sense of discomfort arising from situations like the one she found herself in that night.

So, it was swept aside, and feeling the weight of familial obligation, she said she proceeded up the stairs with him in tow.

She opened the door to the small barsati of the house, and made two cups of coffee. But before she could finish, she alleged he grabbed the cup from her, put it down on a surface nearby, and slammed her onto the bed in the room.

'I was down on the bed, and he was on top of me with full force. And I mean full force,' she alleged, grimacing.

As she narrated what she said happened that night, her body recoiled, and she pulled a hand over her face. 'He slobbered all over me. It was disgusting.'

Before that night, she said she never would have imagined that Mukul Mudgal, a man with whom she had shared strictly familial relations, would come into her home on the pretence of wanting coffee and assault her.

'You know, when you're pressed down by a man who is stronger than you and you're trying to push him off with everything you've got, all you can manage is a grunt. You can't even scream.'

With her arms flailing & legs kicking, he finally relented and left the house, she said.

'He didn't go all the way. He didn't rape me. But he did attack me.'

Reached for comment, Mudgal, 69, denied the allegation as 'utterly false and baseless'.

Mudgal said, 'The alleged incident is said to have taken place more than 25 years ago. While I did have a few meals with her around that period, our friendship did not continue as I felt that we did not have much in common.'

He said, "However, the allegations that I went to her house or that I had assaulted her and caused bruises are utterly false and baseless. I have lived a life without moral blemish. I have worked and moved with women of different ages and different spheres of life without giving a cause for complaint to anyone. I was covered in bruises"

By 1990, Mudgal was a lawyer well on his way to eminence. He was already an Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court and a member secretary/treasurer of the Supreme Court's Legal Aid Committee, positions he kept until 1998 and 1995 respectively.

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