The Supreme Court held that an Internal Complaints Committee at the aggrieved woman's own workplace has jurisdiction under the POSH Act even where the respondent is employed in a different department or organisation. The phrase 'where the respondent is an employee' in Section 11 is a conditional trigger for service rules, not a jurisdictional limit.
The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a sexual-harassment complaint as time-barred under section 9 of the POSH Act. A complaint must be filed within three months of the last incident, extendable by three more for recorded reasons, and later administrative actions extend that window only if they share a direct nexus with the harassment.
On 12 May 2023, a two-judge Bench of Bopanna and Hima Kohli JJ. set aside the Goa University disciplinary inquiry against its former vice-chancellor for procedural defects in the Internal Complaints Committee and, more consequentially, issued nationwide directions to State Legal Services Authorities, the National Judicial Academy and statutory regulators for ICC capacity-building, compliance audits and training. A digest of the holding, the structural reasons the 2013 POSH Act needed a second judicial push ten years on, and the compliance architecture the directions installed.
In the absence of a domestic statute on workplace sexual harassment, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Verma framed guidelines drawn from India's international obligations and made them binding by direction. The guidelines governed for sixteen years until the 2013 POSH Act codified them. A digest of the doctrinal move, the guidelines themselves, and the relationship between the judgment and the statute it inspired.