‘Singing Yeh Reshmi Zulfein not sexual harassment’: Bombay HC's relief to banker
The Bombay high court said the bank's complaints committee did not consider whether the alleged conduct of the petitioner constituted sexual harassment.
The Bombay high court has said that commenting on and singing a song about a woman colleague's hair does not amount to sexual harassment at workplace, thereby granting relief to a senior executive of a private bank.
According to a PTI report, Justice Sandeep Marne in March 18 order said that even if the allegations against the petitioner were taken to be true, a "concrete inference" about sexual harassment cannot be drawn from them.
The petitioner named Vinod Kachave, an associate regional manager with the HDFC Bank in Pune, challenged a July 2024 order passed by the industrial court dismissing his appeal against a report submitted by the bank's Internal Complaints Committee holding him guilty of misconduct under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act).
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Following the committee's report, Kachave was demoted to a deputy regional manager.
According to a Live Law report, Kachave during a training session in 2022 noticed that the woman complainant was uncomfortable with her long hair and was adjusting it.
According to the report, the petitioner in a lighter vein told the woman,"You must be using a JCB to manage your hair." He reportedly sang few lines of “Yeh Reshmi Zulfein” song.
According to PTI, the woman claimed that the senior official allegedly passed a remark about a male colleague's private part in the presence of other women colleagues.
‘Findings of industrial court clearly perverse’: Bombay HC
The high court said the bank's complaints committee did not consider whether the alleged conduct of the petitioner constituted sexual harassment.
"Even if the allegations regarding the incident are accepted as proved, it becomes difficult to hold that the petitioner has committed any act of sexual harassment," the court held.
“The findings of the industrial court were clearly perverse as it completely ignored the fact that even if the allegations were taken as proved, no case of sexual harassment of the complainant was made out,” the court added.
The Bombay high court set aside the bank's internal report of September 2022 as well as the Pune industrial court's order.
Kachave's lawyer Sana Raees Khan argued before the high court that the alleged incidents did not fall under the purview of the POSH Act. Kachave had only remarked to the complainant that she must be using a "JCB" to manage her hair, the lawyer said.
As to the other incident, advocate Khan said the complainant was not even present when the alleged remark was passed. The lawyer also pointed out that the complaint of sexual harassment was made only after the complainant tendered her resignation, the PTI report added.
"She herself never perceived the comment as sexual harassment when it was made," the high court observed, noting that the comment was made in June 2022.
(With PTI inputs)
