Sexual Harassment at Workplace

Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 was passed with the objective of providing protection to the women at workplace. Sexual harassment is when one person subjects another person to an unwelcome act of physical intimacy like grabbing, brushing, touching, pinching, eve teasing, makes an unwelcome demand or request directly or by implication for sexual favors from another person, shows a person any sexually explicit visual material, in the form of pictures/cartoons/pin-ups/calendars/ screensaver version computers/any offensive written material / pornographic e-mails or any other form of unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, eve teasing, jokes likely to cause awkwardness or embarrassment, innuendos, sexist remarks.This statute superseded the Vishakha Guidelines for prevention of sexual harassment introduced by the Supreme Court of India. Every employer is required to constitute an Internal Complaints Committee at each office or branch with 10 or more employees.The Act covers students in schools and colleges as well as patients in hospitals, employers and local authorities will have to set up grievance committees to investigate all complaints.Any aggrieved woman may file a complaint in writing to the Internal committee/ Local Committee within 3 months from the date of incident or the date of the last incident in case of a series of incidents. The victim can also file a complaint with Police under Indian Penal Code 1860 under Sections 294,354, 354A,Attack