Chief Justice DY Chandrachud has asked for a report after an open letter – purportedly by a woman judge in Uttar Pradesh alleging sexual harassment by a senior and requesting permission to kill herself – went viral on social media.

“Kindly permit me to end my life in a dignified way. Let my life be – DISMISSED,” the woman judge from Banda wrote in the letter addressed to the Chief Justice, alleging sex harassment by a district judge and his associates during a stint in Barabanki.

“I have been sexually harassed to the very limit. I have been treated like utter garbage. I feel like an unwanted insect,” she said in the widely-circulated letter.

On the instructions of Chief Justice Chandrachud, the Supreme Court Secretary General Atul M Kurhekar wrote to the registrar general of the Allahabad High Court asking for a report by this morning on the status of all the complaints by the woman judge.

The Secretary General was informed on the phone last night that the acting Chief Justice of the High Court had also taken note of the open letter.

The woman judge said in her letter that a probe was ordered into her allegations after she filed a complaint with the Internal Complaints Committee of the High Court in July 2023, but the inquiry is “a farce and a sham”.

“The witnesses in the enquiry are immediate Subordinates of the District Judge. How the Committee expects the Witnesses to depose against their Boss is beyond my understanding,” she wrote.

She said that she had requested the transfer of the judge pending the inquiry to ensure fair investigation, but her petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court in “just eight seconds.”

“All I requested was that the District Judge be transferred during the pendency of the inquiry. The bare minimum prayer was not heeded to,” the letter said.

“I have no will to live anymore. I have been rendered to a Walking Corpse in the last year and a half. There is no purpose in carrying this soulless and lifeless body around anymore. There is no purpose left in my life,” the two-page letter said.

Lalit Jha – the alleged mastermind behind the Parliament security breach – burned the mobile phones of four accomplices in a bid to destroy evidence, Delhi Police sources told NDTV Friday. Jha, who surrendered to the cops last night, said he had kept the mobile phones of the two men who popped yellow smoke canisters inside the Lok Sabha, and the man and woman did so outside Parliament.

Jha told police he filmed the latter incident, uploaded the clip to Instagram, and sent it to a Kolkata-based NGO to ensure media coverage, before fleeing the scene. On the run for 48 hours, he claimed to have travelled to Nagaur in Rajasthan to stay with two friends. Lalit Jha and another man, Mahesh, returned to Delhi Thursday evening, after which Jha gave himself up at a police station in central Delhi.

A teacher from Kolkata, Lalit Jha has been arrested and handed over to the Special Cell of Delhi Police, which is leading the investigation. His claim of having burned the phones is being verified.

READ | Mastermind Of Parliament Security Breach, A Kolkata Teacher, Surrenders

Police sources told NDTV Mahesh, the man who came with Jha from Rajasthan, was to join the rest in staging the smoke scare outside Parliament on December 13 – a significant date as it was the 22nd anniversary of a terror attack on the old Parliament building, in which nine people were killed.

Source said Mahesh, who had “full knowledge” of the conspiracy, is being tracked down.

Last evening the four who opened the smoke cans – Sagar Sharma and D Manoranjan inside Parliament, and Neelam Devi and Amol Shinde outside – were sent to police custody for a week.

READ | 4 Accused In Parliament Security Breach Sent To Police Custody For 7 Days

Delhi Police told the court the four, who hid the canisters in their shoes to escape what was supposed to be multiple levels of security, also had pamphlets they wanted to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The PM, though, was not in the House on Wednesday. The four told the police they wanted to bring issues like unemployment and the ethnic violence in Manipur to MPs’ attention.

The shoes were reportedly custom made for Sagar Sharma in Lucknow, his home town. The police told the court they intend to take him to Lucknow to identify the shop that made the shoes.

The smoke cans stuffed into the shoes were bought from Mumbai, the police said.

READ | “‘Missing PM’ Pamphlets, Lucknow Shoes”: Delhi Police To Court On Parliament Intruders

Meanwhile, police sources have told NDTV the smoke canisters used had ‘Made in China’ labels on them, and that they had labels warning against use in crowded or indoor areas. While not poisonous, the smoke may have harmed the health of the MPs and others, sources said.

The cops had also claimed a “terrorist” angle to what they declared was a big conspiracy.

However, irrespective of that line of investigation, the security breach has prompted a furious political row with the opposition demanding either the PM or Home Minister Amit Shah explain how it happened.

The ruling BJP and the opposition have traded barbs – each claiming links to the arrested individuals.

Amid protests in Parliament all day Thursday, 14 opposition lawmakers – all but one from the Lok Sabha – were suspended for this session, which is the last full sitting before next year’s election.

READ | “Does BJP Understand Democracy?” DMK’s Kanimozhi After 14 MPs Suspended

The opposition had also demanded a BJP MP – Prathap Simha, whose office had issued letters requesting visitors’ passes for two of the intruders – be investigated.

READ | BJP MP Prathap Simha On Row Over Passes To Breach Accused

Mr Simha denied any knowledge of what was to come when his office wrote the letter, and pointed out passes were issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the final authority on security inside the Parliament.

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The national capital’s minimum temperature dropped below five degrees this morning, making it the coldest day of this season. The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) New Delhi-Safdarjung monitoring station reported a minimum temperature of 4.9 degrees Celsius.

Today, Delhi is colder than Himachal Pradesh’s capital Shimla, as the minimum temperature for Shimla city was recorded at 6.8 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, Delhi’s maximum temperature yesterday settled at 24.1 degrees and the forecasts predict it is expected to stay around 24 degrees. In Shimla, the maximum temperature is expected to settle at 15 degrees today.

Yesterday, Delhi reported a minimum temperature of 6.2 degrees and was the lowest in this year’s winter season. The national capital has been witnessing below-normal temperatures for a couple of days. The minimum temperature on Wednesday was recorded at 7.4 degrees Celsius, on Tuesday at 6.8 degrees Celsius and on Monday at 6.5 degrees Celsius.

At several monitoring stations across Delhi, the air quality was recorded in the ‘Very Unhealthy’ category this morning, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) over 250. In the national capital’s Anand Vihar, the AQI was 475, making the air quality ‘hazardous’. Yesterday,  the overall AQI at 9 am stood at 358 (‘very poor’).

Several regions in north and northeast India experienced fog this morning, affecting visibility. The IMD said very dense fog was observed in isolated pockets over Punjab. Isolated pockets of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura witnessed shallow to moderate fog at 5:30 this morning.