Can an employee go to the police after a PoSH inquiry ends?

Photo: Slidebean / Unsplash. Illustrative office photograph; unrelated to the case.

An employee complained of sexual harassment by her reporting manager. Her employer’s Internal Committee examined the complaint but did not find the harassment established. She believed the committee had not investigated properly and went to the police. The manager then asked the Karnataka High Court to stop the criminal case.[1]

The Court quashed the complaint and FIR on 27 October 2026. But it expressly said that a PoSH committee report does not prevent criminal proceedings. Its decision turned on the contents of this particular criminal complaint.[1]

This distinction matters for HR teams receiving a police notice after an internal inquiry has ended. IC members, employees, Legal teams and employers should also understand what the ruling decided, and what it did not.

What brought the case to court

The employee and her reporting manager worked in the same company. After the internal process, she complained to the police that she had experienced sexual harassment and that the committee had failed to investigate properly or give her relief. The criminal complaint was dated 10 June 2019.[1]

The manager challenged both that complaint and the resulting FIR. He relied on the committee’s report and argued that the police complaint contained general accusations rather than specific incidents and dates. His lawyer described the criminal complaint as an afterthought following the internal outcome. That was the manager’s argument, not a rule that a later police complaint is necessarily suspect.[1]

The State opposed his request. Its lawyer referred to allegations including abusive language, touching the employee’s shoulder, invitations to go on drives or stay at his home, and obscene messages. The State argued that the matter required investigation. The complainant had been served with notice but was not represented before the High Court.[1]

These were competing accounts presented to the Court. They should not be read as established descriptions of everything that happened at work.

Why the High Court stopped this criminal case

The Court read the complaint and considered the committee material. It described the criminal allegations as general, without specific incident dates or sufficient particulars, and concluded that the complaint did not disclose an initial basis for continuing the criminal proceedings. It therefore quashed the complaint and FIR against the manager.[1]

The committee report formed part of that reasoning. Yet the Court also made an express distinction: the PoSH process was separate from criminal proceedings, and its report did not itself prevent a prosecution under the criminal provision involved in this case.[1]

The useful reading is therefore narrow. The manager succeeded because of the Court’s assessment of the complaint and material before it. He did not succeed on a universal rule that an internal finding closes the police route.[1]

This was a petition to stop criminal proceedings, not a criminal trial ending in an acquittal. The order should not be turned into a certificate that every part of the employer’s inquiry was procedurally correct.[1]

An unsuccessful complaint is not automatically a malicious one

One detail deserves attention. In the manager’s lawyer’s account of the committee report, the committee had said that the employee had not complained with malicious intention. The same account described a recommendation to move her out of the manager’s department to avoid further interaction. It would be inaccurate to summarise that account as a finding of a deliberately false complaint with no workplace recommendation.[1]

The PoSH Act also separates an inability to prove a complaint from grounds for action against the complainant. It says that inability to substantiate a complaint or provide adequate proof need not attract action, and requires malicious intent to be established through an inquiry before action is recommended.[2]

HR should not treat the sequence of events, an adverse IC finding or the quashing of a criminal case as a substitute for that assessment. Nor should prior friendliness between colleagues become an assumption that every later interaction was welcome. The Act’s definition of sexual harassment turns on unwelcome conduct.[2]

What HR should do when the police become involved

The following are practical recommendations, not additional directions issued by the Court in this case.

Keep the two processes distinct. Record the IC’s actual findings and recommendations without describing them as a police clearance. The PoSH Act operates in addition to other laws. It also requires the employer to assist a woman who chooses to file a complaint in relation to an offence under the applicable criminal law.[2]

Preserve the existing record. Retain the original complaint, responses, relevant evidence, hearing records and final report. Do not retrospectively improve the committee’s reasoning because a police complaint has arrived. Have Legal assess any request for documents, the appropriate response and the permitted recipients.

Help people describe events accurately. When receiving a complaint, ask for the conduct alleged, the approximate period, location, available messages and possible witnesses. If the person cannot remember an exact date, record that uncertainty and seek other ways to identify the event. Do not turn this judgment into an intake rule that automatically rejects every account lacking a precise date. The Court assessed this criminal complaint; it did not prescribe a new universal IC complaint form.[1]

Use findings that explain themselves. An authorised reader should be able to trace each allegation through the evidence and the committee’s reasons. Ungender’s guide to writing reasoned PoSH inquiry findings offers a practical approach to that task.[3]

For organisations reviewing their recordkeeping, Conduct’s case-management page describes evidence management, access controls and audit logs.[4] Assess those features against the organisation’s needs. Software can support an organised record; it should not decide credibility or replace the IC’s judgment.

Closing the file without closing off another remedy

An employer can accurately communicate that an internal inquiry has concluded while recognising that another legal process may follow. In this case, the High Court stopped the criminal proceedings but explicitly preserved the distinction between the two routes.[1]

For HR, the practical response is to communicate the internal outcome precisely, preserve the record and avoid treating a police complaint as disloyalty or proof of dishonesty. Continue to assess workplace concerns fairly without reopening or rewriting findings informally.

HR teams in business-services and corporate workplaces can write to contact@ungender.in about partnering with Ungender on PoSH governance.

Case and source notes

• Karnataka High Court, Criminal Petition No. 7890 of 2019, decided by Justice H.P. Sandesh on 27 October 2026; neutral citation 2026:KHC:59643. Paragraphs 3–5 contain the background and competing submissions; paragraph 6 contains the reasoning; paragraph 7 and the final order quash the complaint and FIR. The complete nine-page official judgment was read. Names and unnecessary workplace details are omitted from this explainer.[1]
• The case concerned section 354 IPC and a petition under section 482 CrPC. Those are the provisions used in the judgment for this 2019 criminal matter, not a claim that the same section numbers should be used for every new complaint.[1]
• Statutory references above are to sections 2(n), 14, 19(g) and 28. Section 16 also restricts public disclosure of complaint and inquiry information. The retained official Department of Expenditure copy includes 2016 amendment notes but is not represented as a November 2026 consolidated edition.[2]
• The official court register supplies the judgment through its download action rather than an exposed permanent PDF link. Source [1] therefore links to that register; the downloaded PDF is retained privately as evidence, not attached for public circulation.
• Later appeal or stay status remains unverified. Public searches on 10 November 2026 did not identify a matching later decision; the official appellate-status gateway required CAPTCHA. This is not confirmation that no appeal or stay exists.

General practitioner information, not advice on an individual dispute.

Sources

[1] https://judiciary.karnataka.gov.in/ds_judgment.php — Karnataka High Court official register: CRL.P 7890/2019, 27 October 2026; full court PDF retained locally

[2] https://doe.gov.in/files/inline-documents/DoE_Prevention_sexual_harassment.pdf — PoSH Act, official Department of Expenditure copy

[3] https://www.ungender.in/reasoned-posh-inquiry-report-findings

[4] https://www.ungender.in/conduct-posh-compliance-platform/case-management