Posh at Work Places

          The period between the filing of a POSH complaint and the submission of the final inquiry report is often fraught with tension, anxiety, and operational friction. To safeguard the complainant from retaliation, prevent witness tampering, and ensure a fair investigation, Section 12 of the POSH Act equips the Internal Committee with statutory powers to recommend Interim Relief. These measures serve as an operational firewall during ongoing proceedings. Interim measures are strictly preventive, not punitive. They do not signal that the IC has prejudged the merits of the case; rather, they serve to preserve the integrity of the inquiry environment and protect the psychological safety of the parties involved. Under Section 12, upon receiving a written request from the aggrieved woman, the IC may recommend that the employer transfer either party, grant the complainant extra paid leave up to three months, or restrain the respondent from evaluating her perform...

In workplace harassment inquiries, the most complex challenge an Internal Committee (IC) faces is not applying the letter of the law, but evaluating cases where direct evidence does not exist. When an alleged incident occurs behind closed doors—devoid of CCTV coverage, Slack messages, email trails, or direct eyewitnesses—inquiries inevitably devolve into a zero-witness scenario: one individual’s word against another’s. In these moments, committee members often feel pressure to rely on intuition, demeanor, or "gut feel." However, under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, gut feel holds zero legal validity. To conduct a fair, legally sound inquiry, an IC must ground its evaluations in the civil standard of proof: the Preponderance of Probability. Unlike criminal law, which demands proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" (near 99% certainty), civil inquiries under POSH require a comparison of probabilities. The IC...