The Bombay High Court has ruled that passing a comment or singing a song about a woman colleague’s hair does not amount to sexual harassment at the workplace. This verdict granted relief to Vinod Kachave, an associate regional manager at HDFC Bank in Pune, who had been demoted after the bank’s Internal Complaints Committee found him guilty of misconduct under the POSH Act.
Justice Sandeep Marne, in his order dated March 18, observed that even if the allegations were accepted as true, there was no concrete inference that Kachave’s actions amounted to sexual harassment. The court criticized both the bank’s internal committee and the Pune industrial court for failing to assess whether the alleged conduct truly fit the definition of harassment under the law.
The complaint involved comments about the woman’s hair and a song referring to her hair. Another allegation included a remark made about a male colleague’s private part in the presence of female colleagues. However, the court noted that the woman herself had not initially perceived the comments as harassment and had even exchanged friendly messages with Kachave afterward, thanking him for his encouragement.
The high court pointed out that the complaint was filed only after the woman resigned from the company and that the second incident did not involve her presence at all. Declaring the industrial court’s findings “clearly perverse,” the high court set aside the internal report and the demotion order, stating there was no substantiated case of sexual harassment against the petitioner.
