The court drew a firm line between workplace rudeness and sexual misconduct ruling that a single profanity in a heated email exchange carries no sexual overtone under the law
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a sexual harassment FIR filed against the director of a Gurugram-based company who used a profanity in an email exchange with a former female employee holding in its April 18 order that the remark, though “undeniably uncouth and discourteous,” did not constitute a sexually coloured remark under Section 354-A of the Indian Penal Code.
The dispute traces back to October 2018, when the woman who had joined the company in March 2018 as Business Head (North) took four days of medical leave just before a major company event for which she was the point person. A heated email exchange followed, during which the director wrote “f*** off.” The woman resigned immediately; the director accepted her resignation that same evening.
After the company served a legal notice invoking a breach-of-contract clause, she filed an FIR four months later alleging sexual harassment. The court applied both the Supreme Court’s four-step quashing test and the established ‘Bhajan Lal categories,’ concluding that no sexual conduct was evident. Section 354-A, it held, covers unwanted physical contact, solicitation of sexual favours, and sexually charged remarks not a single rough word born of a workplace argument.
The director was, however, directed to deposit ₹20,000 into the Poor Patient Welfare Fund at PGIMER, Chandigarh.
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