Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 8
As complaints of sexual harassment filed under the Sexual Harassment of Woman at Work Place (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, witness an upward trend, the Supreme Court has been confronted with certain unusual questions.
Can a complaint of sexual harassment and an FIR connected with it filed against someone in one state be looked into by an internal complaints’ committee set up in another state?
Does a high court have power to transfer an inquiry into such a complaint of sexual harassment and the probe into FIR relating to the allegations to another state?
The questions assume significance as the Act is silent on the questions that have arisen in a sexual harassment complaint filed by a senior woman IPS officer in Tamil Nadu against a colleague.
The Madras High Court had transferred both complaints and the FIR to Telangana with a direction to set up an internal complaints’ committee under the Act and also probe into the criminal case. The Madras High Court had asked both tasks to be completed in six months even as it kept a petition on the issue pending before it.
As the senior police officer named in the complaint and the FIR challenged the high court’s order, a Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice Indu Malhotra issued a notice to the woman IPS officer and the state of Tamil Nadu last month and posted it for hearing on October 14.
The top court will now examine whether a high court in exercise of its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution transfer a complaint of sexual harassment filed in one state to another.
The senior police officer named in the complaint and the FIR had opposed the transfer of the matter to Telangana contending that in the absence of such a provision under the Act the Madras High Court could not have done it.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/30UqKpf
via Today’s News Headlines
No comments: