Sexual Harrasment at Workplace Bill - Indian Men loosen your wallets

On 3rsd September 2012, LokSabha (lower house in Indian Parliament) passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Bill, 2012.  The bill can be downloaded here. As the name suggests, only women can benefit from this law. The bill talks about human rights, but is silent, as to why it offers protection only to women. For the government, men are not humans.

This law is designed with sole motive to extort money from Indian Men. Indian has a plethora of anti-husband laws. Many husbands who are harassed at home, try to take refuge at workplace. They try to immerse themselves in work.
Now government wants to destroy this safe house of theirs. So they have came up with this bill.

As per this law, sexual harassment,  is defined as follows, ''sexual harassment'' includes any one or more of the following unwelcome acts or behaviour (whether directly or by implication) namely:—
(i) physical contact and advances; or
(ii) a demand or request for sexual favours; or
(iii) making sexually coloured remarks; or
(iv) showing pornography; or
(v) any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature;

As can be seen, clause "v" of this law, is very vague and wide open to interpretation. It provides the opportunity to any unscrupulous women to file a complaint. Per this law, whether the complaint is valid or not, will be decided later. Irrespective of how frivolous any complaint is, it has to be investigated. The male employee who is accused, will be immediately under scanner.

Who is an employee  " ''employee'' means a person employed at a workplace for any work on regular, temporary, ad hoc or daily wage basis, either directly or through an agent, including a contractor, with or, without the knowledge of the principal employer, whether for remuneration or not, or working on a voluntary basis or otherwise, whether the terms of employment are express or implied and includes a co-worker, a contract worker, probationer, trainee, apprentice or called by any other such name;"

 What is a workplace  ? ''workplace'' includes—
(i) any department, organisation, undertaking, establishment, enterprise, institution, office, branch or unit which is established, owned, controlled or wholly or substantially financed by funds provided directly or indirectly by the appropriate Government or the local authority or a Government company or a corporation or a co-operative society;
(ii)  any  private  sector  organisation  or  a  private  venture,  undertaking, enterprise,  institution,  establishment,  society,  trust,  non-governmental organisation,  unit or service provider carrying on commercial, professional, vocational, educational, entertainmental, industrial, health services or financial activities including production, supply, sale, distribution or service;
(iii) hospitals or nursing homes;
(iv) any sports institute, stadium, sports complex or competition or games venue, whether residential or not used for training, sports or other activities relating thereto;
(v) any place visited by the employee arising out of or during the course of employment including transportation provided by the employer for undertaking such  journey;
(vi) a dwelling place or a house;

Many men will say, "but my female colleagues are decent". Well, think again. The definition of an employee and workplace itself is very broad. As can be seen by clause "v", above, the definition of workplace, is very wide, and is not limited to your own office space.  The clause " in relation to workplace covered under sub-clauses (i) and (ii), the person discharging contractual obligations with respect to his or her employees;"  in conjunction with the definition of workplace. Any women can file such a complaint, in any workplace. So not just her own office. So a women from some other company/business, can file complaint against employees of other companies. Claiming that she was harassed there. Further, 3. (1) No woman shall be subjected to sexual harassment at any workplace. 

No proof is necessary to lodge a complaint. The complaint of the women is enough, to accuse any employee. If the definition of "aggrieved woman" is considered, it can be safely concluded that, Any female in India (employed or unemployed) can file a case of sexual harassment against any male, working at any workplace.

The Bill dictates the creation of bodies to handle complaints, and in these bodies, 
(b) not less than two Members from amongst employees preferably committed to the cause of women or who have had experience in social work or have legal knowledge;
(4) The Member appointed from among the non-governmental organisations or associations shall be paid such fees or allowances for holding the proceedings of the Internal Committee, by the employer, as may be prescribed.

By stipulating the creation of bodies (comprised of women) to handle the complaints. The bill creates opportunities of job creation for worthless women. The same type of women, who had been pushing hard for such a bill.

The punishment will be monetary compensation to the victim. Is that an invitation ? So if you have money, go ahead, harass someone. Pay money and close the case.

To mislead the people, there is clause added to prevent misuse, which is an eye-wash. Since the bill itself says "Provided that a mere inability to substantiate a complaint or provide adequate proof need not attract action against the complainant under this section". The Indian courts have been carrying out this dictum in letter and spirit.

All the proceedings of an inquiry is kept outside the purview of Right To Information, Act.
There is more such diseased stuff in the bill. I leave it up to the knowledgeable reader to pursue that.

So with nothing to loose, it won't be surprising, if there are a spate of sexual harassment cases filed across workplaces in India.

Taliban style Rape Law in India

Yes, its true. Indian laws related to sexual offense (against women) are very similar to Taliban. The only difference being that in India, you replace male with female. In fact, the Indian laws are worse then the Taliban implemented sharia law.

Under Taliban law, rape can only be proven if the rapist confesses or if there are four male witnesses.
Under Indian law, if any women says she has been raped by a man. The man is convicted solely on the basis of the verbal testimony of the women.
Refer Indian Penal Code 375, 376. Indian Evidence Act 114A, and 146.

Some salient points about how the Indian courts consider arguments in rape cases.
- Mere verbal statement of any women is sufficient to start criminal proceedings against any man (of any nationality) in India. The words of the women are taken as gospel truth.
- Even if the women admits that the physical relationship was consensual. And she later wants to press rape charges, she can do so.
- If the women has NO injury marks, nor even bruises on her body. Indian courts view that such arguments do not deny the fact that she was raped.
- No women would ever lie about rape. So if she says, rape has happened, and even if there is no other evidence against the accused. The accused will be convicted. No DNA, or any other evidence is required. If there are lapses in the prosecution story, they are to be overlooked.
- If the accused tries to point finger at the character of the women. It will weigh heavily against him.
- The names and photos of the accused get published in news media. And even if the accused are acquitted, the name of the complainant remains secret.
- The accused remains in jail, throughout the trial. Only if the accused has tons of money, contacts, can he get bail. Else he will rot in jail. (In the TISS rape cases, all the accused were acquitted. But they had to rot in jail for the entire duration of trial. No apologies from the legal system for the torture they had to undergo.)

The Indian Supreme Court, has constantly reiterated all of the above in its judgements, and continues to do so.


Research has shown that most complaints of rape in India are fake.  A careful look at the all the major rape cases, shows the true nature of these fakes charges. Take for example, the Hinjewadi rape case. Despite no evidence of rape, the accused were convicted. There were plenty of gaps in the prosecution theory, all of which were overlooked. The judgement is available online. Such kind of judgements are a shame to any civilized society.

The Indian male mentality is very much like a dog. When dogs are copulating, other dogs don't like that, and start barking. Same is the case here. Whenever news of rape is published, passionate views flood the media house through web and SMS. A common, strong demand is to hang the accused, stone them in public, cut off his genitals, etc. And to torture them in the worst possible manner. These comments are based totally on the headline of a rape news. For the masses, the accused are already convicts.

The false propaganda of Crime Against Women

If a women hurts/cheats another women, shall it be labelled as crime against women ?  Yes it is. However, for all crime against women, Men are held responsible, and laws are enacted to that effect, to harass Men. Going by the same logic, when a man is hurt/harassed, it should be labelled as crime against men. And should laws be framed to hold women responsible for that ? And going by numbers, crime against men is a much much bigger issue, then crime against women. Please refer http://ncrb.nic.in/ for statistics.

The general perception is that crime against women, necessarily means that a man, must have harassed an abla naari. Going by reality on ground, this is very incorrect. Unfortunately by reality, people today believe, what is shown in media. Media doesn't show reality, they show, news items, that are spicy(aka yellow journalism).  A news like "girl molested/raped" gets more viewership, then one, which says, "farmer used innovative techniques to improve crop production". So media tries hard to find news about women being harassed. And if they don't find one, they stage it.As is evident from the recent news about molestation in Assam. http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Guwahati/Scribe-behind-Assam-molestation/Article1-889772.aspx   Crime against Men, well people don't even think about it, since it is not so spicy. Not a spicy topic to do time pass discussion.

Crime against women, very clearly implies, that don't treat women as equal to men. Such narrow minded classifications, are orthodox, and regressive. Normally the self proclaimed women reformers are in the forefront, of always, classifying anything related to women in a very perverted manner. This is very dangerous for society, and is very destructive.A glaring example of this destruction, is the huge number of male suicides in India. Due to the biased Indian laws, tens of thousands of crores are wasted due to lost productivity of Men who get caught in false cases of crime against women.

Does Family Implies only Females ?

Different people have different viewpoints about anything, but in social norms, normally not many viewpoints are available. Case in point is the definition of a family. Though some may argue, that there are different views about family, when it comes to practice, there is still a majority view, which is acceptable to most people. The majority view is normally conservative. What is that view ? That view is that females are an essential part of a family, and that they need to be protected. Take an e.g. of family room/areas in a restaurant. If a group of females(with no accompanying male), enters the family area, they are greeted. It can be that none of the females are related by any blood relationship, or they may be just acquaintances of each other. But they can go in the family area. However, if say two men, who are brothers, try to enter the family room, they are normally stopped, and requested to occupy the general area. If they have a female(who may not be a "family" member) accompanying them though, they can enter the family area.

Even when people inquire a man about his family, they essentially are asking about his wife. (Indian) Society feels that females, more specifically wife is an essential part of any family. And without a wife, there can be no family. So even though, you have a loving an caring mother, sister, father, brother. That amounts to nothing, for general people. It is a faulty and shallow viewpoint though. Since these people think, that if you are not pro-creating, you aren't part of the society. It is essential to note that Indian scriptures do not mandate such a thing. Though scriptures speaks about Grushasthshram, it is not mandatory. God Hanuman never married, even when many efforts were made towards that end  by his "well-wishers". Though, if we think about it, Hanuman is an essential part of Ram's family. At their core, even other religions would subscribe to this view.

Fallacy of rising crime against women

The latest figures released by Maharashtra Police, sheds light on the false propaganda of rise in crime against women.


Per these stats, the only crimes that are on rise is dowry  related. Research has proved the reason, why dowry related crimes are seen as increasing. It is very easy to lodge a false dowry harassment complaint. Lodging a false complaint by a wife is not a  crime, per the Indian judiciary. Additionally any death of a married woman is  recorded as dowry death. It has became a huge extortion racket. Laws meant to protect wife, are very loosely worded, and are rampantly used to harass honest straight forward husbands, and his relatives.  It is high time, that these moronic laws (read IPC 498A, 304B, 306, etc )are scrapped.