Direction (Qs.1 to 5): In the passage given below, certain words are maintained in bold. Choose among the given alternatives, the option which is most similar to the word given in bold.

In an unprecedented …(A)… step, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi has appeared before the Justice S.A. Bobde inhouse inquiry committee examining the sexual harassment allegation leveled against him by a former Supreme Court employee. A letter of request was issued to the CJI and he responded to it and met the panel, a highly-placed source told The Hindu on Wednesday.

High constitutional office-holders like the CJI are not issued summons …(B)… as is the usual case. They are sent a ‘letter of request’ to participate in the proceedings. The development comes a day after the complainant declined to participate in the in-house proceedings. She declined to participate following which the committee conveyed to her that the consequences of her decision would be that the committee would have to continue the hearings ex parte. She agreed,” the source said. The source, however, refused to divulge …(C)… on what day the CJI participated in the proceedings.

The committee, which comprises Justices Indira Banerjee and Indu Malhotra, has been holding hearings on a daily basis from Monday. On the third hearing on April 30, the complainant refused to further participate in the ‘informal’ proceedings. She issued a press statement that said one of the reasons for her withdrawal was that the panel refused her request to have a lawyer or a support person accompanies her during the hearings.

“I was compelled …(D)… to walk out of the committee proceedings today (April 30) because the committee seemed not to appreciate the fact that this was not an ordinary complaint but a complaint of sexual harassment against a sitting CJI,” she stated in a press release. The report, when done, would likely be placed before a Full Court and vetted by all the judges of the court.

The crisis in the Supreme Court began when a clutch …(E)… of websites published the woman’s allegations against the CJI on Easter morning. Within an hour of the articles coming online on April 20, the Chief Justice Gogoi held an “extraordinary and unusual hearing” in the Supreme Court, during which he claimed the allegations were part of a larger plot to “deactivate the office of the Chief Justice of India.”