Sexual Harassment Complaints of Same Gender to be Maintainable Under POSH Act 2013, Says Calcutta High Court

Kolkata, January 14: In a landmark judgment, the Calcutta High Court said that same-gender complaints are maintainable under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. It is also commonly known as the POSH Act. A single bench of Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya passed the judgement.

According to a report published in The Live Law, the verdict was issued in the case Dr Malabika Bhattacharjee v Internal Complaints Committee, Vivekananda College and others. According to the bench, people of genders should be included in the Act as Section 2(m) of the 2013 Act has the term "respondent" irrespective of any gender.

Indian Civil Liberties Union tweeted, "Same-Gender Sexual Harassment complaints Maintainable under Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, commonly referred to as the POSH Act."

Tweet by Indian Civil Liberties Union:

"Sexual harassment, as contemplated in the 2013 Act, has to pertain to the dignity of a person, which relates to her/his gender and sexuality; which does not mean that any person of the same gender cannot hurt the modesty or dignity as envisaged by the 2013 Act," reported the online media portal quoting the high court as saying.

A writ petition was filed to challenge the action of the Internal Complaints Committee of an institution to accept a complaint under the Act as without jurisdiction. Notably, both the complainant and the respondent belonged to the same gender.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 14, 2021 02:52 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).