I Have Been Named in a POSH Complaint at Work: My Rights in the Internal Committee Inquiry

If you have been named as the respondent in a POSH complaint, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the Rules of 2013 give you a fixed set of rights: a copy of the complaint within seven working days of the committee receiving it (Rule 7(2)), ten working days to file a written reply with your documents and witness list (Rule 7(3)), an inquiry run on the principles of natural justice (Section 11(1) and Rule 7(4)), a hearing and a copy of the findings with a chance to make a representation against them before the committee (second proviso to Section 11(1)), and an appeal within ninety days of the recommendations (Section 18). Neither side may bring a lawyer into the committee room (Rule 7(6)). Your rights as a respondent in a POSH complaint therefore turn on what you file in the next ten working days and how you behave until the report arrives.

Part of the POSH and workplace harassment practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.

This page is for the employee who received the committee's email this morning with a complaint attached and a request to work from home. It covers the inquiry, from first notice to report. What to do once the report is out is in our guide on challenging a POSH ICC inquiry report.

What am I entitled to receive, and by when?

You are entitled to the complaint, the documents filed with it and the names and addresses of her witnesses, then ten working days to answer, with the whole inquiry to finish within ninety days. Rule 7(1) requires the complainant to file six copies of the complaint with supporting documents and witness names, and Rule 7(2) requires the committee to send one copy to you within seven working days.

Deadline warning. The ten working days under Rule 7(3) run from the day you receive the complaint papers, not from the date on the committee's email. If you need more time, ask in writing before the last date with the reason. A refused written request is the record that later shows you were denied reasonable time, which is what the Supreme Court set an inquiry aside for in Aureliano Fernandes v State of Goa.

What should I do today, and what must I not do?

Today you preserve the record, start the clock in writing, and go quiet.

Do today:

• Save the committee's email and every attachment as received, and note when you opened it.
• Acknowledge receipt in one line, ask for any documents or witness names referred to but not attached, and ask who the committee members are.
• Speak to an advocate outside the committee. Rule 7(6) bars representation before the committee, not advice behind it.
• Comply with the work-from-home instruction. If you object, object once, in writing, in neutral words.

Do not:

• Contact the complainant or any named witness, directly or through a colleague, even to apologise.
• Delete a message, an email or a photograph. Deletion is discoverable and reads as consciousness of guilt.
• Post anything or discuss the complaint in a team chat. Section 16 makes the complaint and both identities confidential.
• Resign. It does not end the inquiry, it removes your statutory protection against termination, and the committee can still direct you to pay compensation after you leave (first proviso to Section 13(3)). If you are being pushed, read when a resignation is really a termination first.

Three rules that govern the first phase.

How do I write my reply within ten working days?

Answer every allegation one by one, in the complaint's own order, marking each as admitted, denied or explained, and attach your documents and witness list, because Rule 7(3) makes the reply the point at which your evidence enters the record.

Open with the particulars, then take any preliminary point that goes to the committee itself. Section 4(2) requires a senior woman employee as Presiding Officer, at least two other employee members, an external member from an association committed to the cause of women or a person familiar with sexual harassment issues, and at least half the members women. In Ruchika Singh Chhabra v Air France India (Delhi High Court, 30 May 2018) the external member did not meet that qualification, and the Division Bench set aside the committee's constitution, all its proceedings and its report, and ordered a fresh inquiry by a reconstituted committee. Raise a composition objection at the start, politely and with the reason. If the complaint is on its face more than three months after the last incident, say so with the dates, because Section 9 allows three months, extendable by three only on recorded reasons: see our guide on POSH complaint time limits under Section 9.

The body of the reply is a table with five columns: the allegation as she puts it, date and place, your answer, the supporting document, the witness. Admit what is true, because a denial of facts the records will prove destroys your credibility on the facts they cannot reach. "She was friendly with me" and "she never objected" are not defences to a specific unwelcome act, since Section 2(n) turns on whether the conduct was unwelcome to her. What is a defence: the act did not happen, it happened differently, the message is quoted out of a longer exchange, or four other people were in the room.

List and number your documents. Ask the committee, in the reply, to call for records the employer holds and you cannot reach: CCTV, access card logs, the server copy of a chat. Section 11(3) gives the committee the powers of a civil court to summon any person, examine on oath and require the production of documents. Close with your requests: copies of every statement the committee relies on, cross-examination of the complainant and her witnesses, written notice of each hearing, signed records of each sitting, and a hearing on the findings under the second proviso to Section 11(1). Write the whole document without one adjective about the complainant. A motive goes in only if you hold a document that shows it.

Common mistake. Writing the reply as a defence of your character and an attack on hers. The committee decides specific acts on a balance of probabilities. Every sentence about the kind of person you are, or she is, costs you credibility on the facts and can be read as the hostile treatment Section 3(2)(iv) itself describes.

Can I have a lawyer?

Not inside the committee room, and the same bar applies to her. Rule 7(6) provides that the parties shall not be allowed to bring in any legal practitioner to represent them in their case at any stage of the proceedings before the Complaints Committee. What it bars is representation: an advocate appearing for you, addressing the members or questioning witnesses. It does not bar you from consulting an advocate or having your reply and questionnaire prepared with one.

In Aureliano Fernandes v State of Goa (Supreme Court, 12 May 2023) the respondent's request to be represented through a lawyer had been declined, and the Court did not fault that refusal. What it faulted was the committee's failure to give him reasonable time to prepare his defence, and it said this mattered all the more because his request for a lawyer had already been declined. Use that logic. You are unrepresented in the room by law, so you are entitled to realistic dates, to the statements in advance, and to a fair gap between receiving a deposition and questioning the witness who gave it. If your standing orders allow a fellow employee to assist in a domestic inquiry, ask for one and cite the rule. The general position is in our answer on what a domestic inquiry is and what your rights are.

Can I cross-examine the complainant and call witnesses?

Yes, though the committee controls the manner, and the usual form is questions put through the committee rather than you questioning her face to face. The second proviso to Section 11(1) requires that both parties be given an opportunity of being heard, and Rule 7(4) requires natural justice.

The working model is the Delhi High Court's in Ashok Kumar Singh v University of Delhi (Division Bench, 18 August 2017). The Court directed the committee to restart from the stage of cross-examination, with the respondent's questions put through a questionnaire submitted to the committee and each witness answering it in the committee's presence. It relied on the Supreme Court's order of 12 January 2010 in Bidyut Chakraborty v Delhi University, which held that respondents "are entitled to a hearing and to cross-examine the witnesses", and on the Kerala High Court in L.S. Sibu v Air India, which held that a prejudicial statement cannot be used against a person without an opportunity to correct and contradict it.

So prepare written questions for the complainant and each of her witnesses before the hearing at which they depose. Short questions, one fact each, tied to a date, a place or a document. Nothing about her clothing, relationships or character. Your own witnesses are named under Rule 7(3) and the committee can summon them under Section 11(3). Do not object to the members asking questions themselves. In Union of India v Dilip Paul (Supreme Court, 6 November 2023) the argument that a complaints committee became a prosecutor by putting its own questions was rejected: strict rules of evidence do not apply and an inquiring body may question witnesses to discover the truth.

What you can insist on is time. In Aureliano Fernandes the committee held twelve hearings in a month and served six fresh depositions with forty-eight hours to reply. The Supreme Court held that "the undue haste demonstrated by the Committee for bringing the inquiry to a closure, cannot justify curtailment of the right of the appellant to a fair hearing" and sent the inquiry back to the point where the haste began. In Union of India v Mudrika Singh (Supreme Court, 3 December 2021) the Court warned against "a rising trend of invalidation of proceedings inquiring into sexual misconduct, on hyper-technical interpretations of the applicable service rules". A missed formality that caused you no real prejudice will not undo a report. Your job is to make a record of actual prejudice: what you asked for, on which date, and what was refused.

Can HR send me home, cut my pay or terminate me while the inquiry runs?

HR can ask you to work from home or move you, it cannot lawfully reduce your pay on the strength of a pending complaint, and a termination before the report is a service-law question answered by your contract, the standing orders or the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961, not by the POSH Act.

Section 12(1) lets the committee, on the aggrieved woman's written request, recommend that the employer transfer her or you to another workplace or grant her leave, and Rule 8 adds a restraint on you reporting on her work performance. Section 12(3) obliges the employer to implement the recommendation. A transfer or a changed reporting line during the inquiry is therefore lawful interim relief, not a finding, and an instruction to work from home on full pay is an administrative arrangement of the same kind.

Pay is different. The only deduction from a respondent's salary the Act knows is Section 13(3)(ii), after the allegation is proved, in a sum fixed under Section 15. Nothing in the Act authorises withholding salary while the inquiry is pending. For most managers a suspension is governed by the contract and the HR policy, because a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity, or in a supervisory capacity above the wage ceiling, is outside the definition of worker in Section 2(zr) of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020. If you are a worker in an industrial establishment with three hundred or more workers, Section 38 of that Code requires the standing orders to provide subsistence allowance at fifty per cent of wages for the first ninety days of a suspension pending inquiry and seventy-five per cent after that where the delay is not attributable to you. Our answer on whether you get paid when suspended pending inquiry covers the detail.

Section 39(1) of the Shops Act provides that no employer shall remove or dismiss an employee with six months of continuous service except for a reasonable cause and after one month's notice or pay in lieu, and its proviso removes the notice only where misconduct is brought on record with proof at an enquiry held for the purpose. A termination issued while the committee is still sitting is a termination without that proof. Section 39(2) gives an appeal to the prescribed authority on the ground that there was no reasonable cause or no misconduct, and Section 39(3) provides compensation of up to one month's pay for every year of service where the employer will not reinstate. The appeal period is short and is fixed under the Rules.

What exactly is the committee deciding, and on what standard of proof?

Whether, on a preponderance of probabilities, you did one or more of the unwelcome acts listed in Section 2(n), read with the circumstances in Section 3(2). Section 2(n) covers physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature. Section 3(2) adds circumstances such as a promise or threat about her employment, interference with her work, a hostile work environment, and humiliating treatment. The word is unwelcome, judged from her side, so your intention is not an ingredient, and one act can be enough.

The standard of proof is civil, not criminal. In Union of India v Dilip Paul the Supreme Court restated that "in a disciplinary inquiry, the standard of proof is preponderance of probabilities and the courts must only interfere where the findings are either perverse or based on no evidence at all", and that such allegations are examined on the broader probabilities of the case rather than on insignificant discrepancies. In practice the complainant's own account, if the committee finds it credible and nothing in the record contradicts it, can carry the finding. That is why a general denial is worth so little and a document that contradicts one specific fact is worth so much.

Should I agree to conciliation under Section 10?

Conciliation is available only if she asks for it, only before the inquiry begins, and cannot be built on money, so you can neither force it nor buy it. Section 10(1) permits the committee, before initiating an inquiry and at the request of the aggrieved woman, to take steps to settle the matter, and its proviso says no monetary settlement shall be made as a basis of conciliation. A settlement is recorded and forwarded to the employer (Section 10(2)), copied to both parties (Section 10(3)), and ends the inquiry (Section 10(4)). If you break a term, the first proviso to Section 11(1) lets her reopen it.

A settlement is not a finding that the allegation is proved, but it is a record with your employer that contains words from you. If the allegation is untrue, an apology in a recorded settlement is a document you may meet again, because Section 28 makes the Act additional to every other law and a criminal complaint remains open to her. Never approach her to propose it: ask the committee whether she is open to it. The complainant's view of the same step is in our guide on the POSH complaint procedure.

What if the complaint is false or malicious?

Section 14 lets the committee recommend action against a complainant who made the complaint knowing it to be false, or with malice, or who produced a forged or misleading document, but the section itself says a mere inability to substantiate a complaint or to provide adequate proof need not attract action against her, and that malicious intent must be established after an inquiry under the prescribed procedure before any action is recommended.

Hold two things apart. A finding of not proved under Section 13(2) is the ordinary outcome when the evidence does not reach the standard, and it is not a finding that she lied. A Section 14 recommendation needs a document that contradicts the complaint on a matter she could not have been mistaken about, a forged screenshot exposed by the server copy, or a written threat to complain unless a rating changed. Your belief that the complaint was timed to an appraisal is not proof of malice, and neither is her delay. If you hold the document, put it in the reply in a short factual paragraph and ask for a Section 14 finding at the end. If you do not, reserve the point and say nothing about her motives, because a counter-attack that fails leaves you with a proved allegation and a record of retaliation.

Will this become a police case?

It can, independently of the committee, because the acts in Section 2(n) overlap with two offences in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Section 75 of the BNS covers physical contact and advances involving unwelcome and explicit sexual overtures, a demand or request for sexual favours, showing pornography against her will, and sexually coloured remarks, with rigorous imprisonment of up to three years for the first three and up to one year for remarks, or fine, or both. Section 79 punishes a word, sound, gesture or object intended to insult the modesty of a woman, or an intrusion upon her privacy, with simple imprisonment of up to three years and fine. Section 19(g) and (h) of the POSH Act require the employer to assist her with a police complaint and to cause action under the penal law.

The committee cannot stop an FIR, and a not proved finding does not bind a criminal court, which applies a different standard. A police complaint does not stop the committee either. Section 27, which makes offences under the POSH Act non-cognizable, is about offences under that Act itself and says nothing about the BNS. If you have reason to fear arrest, an application under Section 482 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the former Section 438 CrPC) is a separate proceeding before the Sessions Court or the High Court, explained in our guide to anticipatory bail in India.

Who can I tell? Confidentiality and retaliation

You may tell your advocate, your doctor and your family, and you must not tell your team, the office group or anyone who could carry it to the complainant or her witnesses. Section 16 provides that the contents of the complaint, the identity and addresses of the aggrieved woman, the respondent and the witnesses, the conciliation and inquiry proceedings, the recommendations and the action taken shall not be published, communicated or made known to the public, press and media in any manner. Section 17 attaches a penalty under the service rules for a person entrusted with the complaint who breaches it, and Rule 12 fixes a penalty of five thousand rupees, recovered by the employer, for any person who contravenes Section 16.

Contact with the complainant or her witnesses is the fastest way to lose a defensible inquiry. A message that says only "I am sorry if you felt that way" is an admission in her hands and evidence of pressure in the committee's. Route every communication through the committee. Attend every hearing, because Rule 7(5) allows the committee to terminate the inquiry or decide it ex parte if a party fails without sufficient cause to attend three consecutive hearings, after fifteen days written notice. Retaliation runs the other way too. If you are a reporting manager, a poor rating, a changed shift or a withdrawn project for her during the inquiry will be read as the detrimental treatment Section 3(2) describes.

Three points respondents get wrong in the first week, each set out above.

What happens after the report: action, deductions and the appeal

The committee must give its report to the employer within ten days of completing the inquiry and make it available to both parties (Section 13(1)), and the employer must act within sixty days (Section 13(4)). Before that, the second proviso to Section 11(1) entitles you to the findings and a representation against them before the committee, the last point at which a factual error can be corrected without a court. If the allegation is not proved, the committee recommends no action (Section 13(2)). If it is proved, Section 13(3) requires a recommendation of action for misconduct under the service rules or, where none exist, from the Rule 9 range, which runs from a written apology to termination, together with a salary deduction fixed under the Section 15 factors, which include your income and financial status. The Section 18 appeal lies within ninety days of the recommendations. The forum, the writ alternative and the grounds that succeed are in the guide on challenging a POSH ICC inquiry report and our short answer on whether you can appeal an Internal Committee finding.

Step by step: the first ten working days

1. Day one: acknowledge receipt, record the date and time, ask for any documents or witness names not sent, and ask who the members are.
2. Day one: preserve everything. Export chats in full, back up emails and calendar entries, keep copies on a device you control. Delete nothing.
3. Days two to four: build the allegation table, one row per incident: her allegation, date and place, your answer, the document, the witness.
4. Days four to six: draft the reply: particulars, preliminary points, the paragraph-wise answer, documents, witnesses, and your requests.
5. Day seven: have the draft reviewed. Remove every adjective about the complainant and every sentence about motive not tied to a document.
6. Day eight or nine: file within the ten working days, in the form the notice asked for, and keep proof of receipt. If you need more time, ask before day ten, in writing, with the reason.
7. After filing: attend every hearing, ask for signed records of each sitting, and hand in your questionnaire for each witness when that witness deposes.
8. Keep a dated diary of every notice, filing, hearing, request and answer.

The mistakes respondents make

What I tell a respondent in the first meeting is that these inquiries are decided in the first ten working days and in the conduct that follows, not at the hearings. A reply that answers every allegation with a date and a document, concedes what is true and asks for the records the employer holds reads as an honest account. Where these inquiries actually turn is on one or two specific facts that a record can settle, and on whether the respondent kept his distance from the complainant and the witnesses while it ran.

The mistakes, in the order they usually happen: nine days of silence followed by a reply written overnight. A blanket denial that the records then contradict. A reply built around her character. A message to her, or to a witness, to clear the air. Arriving to cross-examine without written questions. Refusing to proceed without a lawyer in the room. Expecting proof beyond reasonable doubt. Resigning in the second week.

Key takeaway. The committee decides specific acts on a preponderance of probabilities. Your defence is documents against specific facts, filed within ten working days under Rule 7(3), a written questionnaire for each witness, and a clean record of conduct until the report.

Our POSH practice in Bengaluru advises respondents outside the committee room.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.

Related Guides

The inquiry and any parallel termination or criminal track are handled together by our POSH practice and our employment and labour law practice.

• How to Challenge a POSH ICC Inquiry Report: Appeal, Writ and Natural Justice
• POSH Complaint Time Limits: Section 9, Condonation and the Series of Incidents Test
• POSH Act Complaint Procedure in India: How to File a Workplace Sexual Harassment Complaint