Calcutta High Court orders committee to revaluate NUJS teacher's sexual harassment complaint against Vice-Chancellor

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed a committee to revaluate the sexual harassment complaint filed by an Associate Professor of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata against the University's Vice-Chancellor..The local committee for the 24-Parganas (North) district, constituted under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act), had rejected the complaint on the ground of limitation..Justice Kausik Chanda directed the committee to conclude the proceedings on merit, in line with the POSH act."The question of limitation is a mixed question of law and fact and, therefore, the issue of limitation could not have been decided by the local committee at the threshold stage without evidence. The local committee, in deciding the issue of limitation, should accept the allegations made in the complaint at its face value. There is no occasion to examine the veracity of the allegations made in the complaint at the threshold stage," the Court observed..In the complaint, the petitioner faculty member argued that the Vice-Chancellor had interfered with her job, creating a frightening and unpleasant working atmosphere for her. The petitioner said that she had also been exposed to degrading treatment, which endangered her health and safety.The petitioner then approached the local committee with her complaint in December 2023 and had also moved an application for a condonation of delay in 2024. This application for condoning the delay was denied by the ICC because the alleged harassment had taken place between 2019 and 2023.On March 5 this year, the committee said that the complaint was barred by limitation, prompting the petitioner to move the High Court..At the outset, the Court was of the view that the question of whether the complaint of the petitioner was time-barred or not as per Section 9 of POSH Act has to have been analysed by the committee in line with the definition of sexual harassment and what constitutes the same.The Court observed that the committee, while concluding that the complaint was barred by limitation, failed to consider the incidents that allegedly took place between April to December 2023 as sexual harassment'."In the present case, the allegations made in the complaint clearly suggest that the circumstances of victimisation and detrimental treatment allegedly taken place between April, 2023 till December, 2023 have a nexus with the alleged sexual harassment of the petitioner between September, 2019 to April, 2023. Therefore, if the complaint is read as a whole, would lead to a conclusion that the same was within the period of limitation in terms of Section 9 (1) of the Act of 2013," the Court observed.It, therefore, directed the committee to re-examine the petitioner's complaint and decide the same on merits..Advocates Kallol Bose, Rohit Das, Kishwar Rahman, Sristi Roy, Divya J Tekriwal and Rishav Mazumder appeared for the petitioner.Advocates Sirsanya Bandopadhyay and Ritesh Ganguly appeared for the State of West Bengal.Advocates Soumya Majumder, Sanjukta Dutta and Kinnor Ghosh appeared for WBNUJS.Advocates Avik Ghatak and Abhinav Rakshit appeared for the Vice-Chancellor..[Read Judgment]