POSH Complaint Process: How a Complaint Moves From Filing to the Inquiry Report, the Timelines and the Penalties

TL;DR: A POSH complaint is filed in writing with the employer’s Internal Committee, normally within three months of the incident, and the committee can extend that window in justified cases. Practitioners describe four stages from there: filing, a preliminary check of jurisdiction, an inquiry that follows natural justice, and a report that Esplora Legal says must be completed within 90 days. The 90-day clock is the number an employer should manage to, because inquiries that overrun it or skip a procedural step are the ones most exposed to challenge. An Internal Committee that documents every stage protects the complainant, the respondent and the company.

A POSH complaint is a written grievance with a fixed route and a fixed clock

POSH complaint

a written complaint of sexual harassment at the workplace, made by an aggrieved woman under the POSH Act, 2013, to the committee the Act requires to hear it.

The route is set by headcount. A complaint goes to the employer’s Internal Committee, or to the district’s Local Committee where the workplace is too small to have one. From the day it lands, the committee works against a 90-day deadline to finish the inquiry and submit its report.

Our experience at Astravise is that most employers treat complaint handling as an HR matter until the first complaint arrives, then find themselves running something much closer to a hearing. The Internal Committee issues notice to the respondent, collects evidence, examines witnesses and writes findings that a High Court may later read line by line. Procedure, more than good intent, decides whether an Internal Committee’s findings survive. The caseload behind that procedure is growing.

Prime Database cautions that FY22 reporting was voluntary, so part of that rise reflects more companies disclosing. The series covers listed companies only and stops at FY24, and no published official figure covers POSH complaints across all Indian employers for 2025 or 2026.

Which committee hears a POSH complaint depends on headcount

An Internal Committee is the body that every employer with ten or more employees must constitute to receive and inquire into sexual harassment complaints, according to eLearnPOSH. The Act covers all workplaces, and complaints from employers below that threshold go to the Local Committee constituted by the district authority. Its former name, the Internal Complaints Committee, was changed by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2016.

Composition is the first thing a respondent’s lawyer tests, because a defect there undermines everything the committee does afterwards. Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas summarises the requirement as a committee of at least four members, with a quorum of three that includes the Presiding Officer.

The quorum row surprises most boards. As the same Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas analysis notes, the Act and Rules do not require the external member to be present for a quorum, and they do not say whether the report must be unanimous or decided by majority. Astravise’s view is that a committee should settle both points in its written procedure before the first complaint, not argue them during one. The firm also recommends an external member with a legal or judicial background, citing a Delhi High Court ruling that excluded only the employer bank’s own panel lawyer, so the working test is independence from the employer.

Tenure, multi-site committees and the annual filing are covered in our guide to POSH Act compliance for employers, the Internal Committee and annual filing. The rest of this piece follows a single complaint from filing to report.

How does a POSH complaint move from filing to the inquiry report?

Esplora Legal’s four stages are a practitioner framing rather than statutory headings, but they match how a well-run committee works. Each stage ends in a decision a court can later review, so each needs a written record.

1. The complainant files in writing. Under the POSH Act, a complaint is filed in writing with the Internal Committee, normally within three months of the incident, and greytHR notes that the committee can extend this in justified cases. Beacon Filing, citing Section 9(1) of the Act, puts the maximum extension at a further three months. A committee that accepts a late complaint should record its reasons, since an unexplained extension hands the respondent an easy ground for challenge.

2. The committee checks jurisdiction and admissibility. Before issuing notice, the committee confirms that the complainant, the respondent and the incident fall within its workplace and its powers. A complaint from a man or a third-gender employee under a gender-neutral policy is heard under the company’s own grievance rules, because the Act protects women only. Recording which regime the inquiry runs under prevents a later dispute about what the committee could require.

3. The committee hears both sides. Notice goes to the respondent, the committee collects documents and examines witnesses, and each party answers the material against them. Rule 6 of the POSH Rules, as greytHR summarises it, governs this inquiry and requires natural justice, confidentiality and a fair hearing. Minutes of every sitting, signed by the members present, are the proof that this happened.

4. The committee writes findings and submits its report. The inquiry must be completed and the report submitted within 90 days. A sound report sets out each allegation, the evidence on it, the finding and the reasons. Where members disagree, recording the dissent is safer than papering over it, given that the Act is silent on unanimity.

The timelines run three months to file and 90 days to report

The internal window is far shorter than the criminal one. An undated Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas analysis contrasts the three-month limit for an Internal Committee complaint with a three-year limitation period for a court to take cognizance under Section 354A of the IPC. A complainant who misses the internal window still has that longer route, so a refusal to extend rarely ends the matter.

What happens after the Internal Committee submits its report?

The report goes to the employer, which acts on the committee’s recommendations. Beacon Filing, citing Section 13(1) of the Act, states that the findings report must reach the employer or District Officer within 10 days of the inquiry’s completion. Employers should take the periods for the employer’s action and for any appeal from the Act and Rules directly and write them into the committee’s procedure.

Reporting continues after the case closes. Esplora Legal reports that amendments to the Companies (Accounts) Rules now require companies to disclose POSH complaint numbers in their board reports, including complaints received, complaints resolved and cases pending beyond 90 days, and flags liability under Section 134(8) of the Companies Act, 2013 for inaccurate disclosure. The exact item list should be checked against the Ministry of Corporate Affairs notification before the board report is drafted.

The annual report to the District Officer runs on a local calendar. Gurugram’s District Officer required annual reports for calendar year 2025 by 28 February 2026, accepted only from the organisation’s official email address. Other districts set their own dates, so a company with offices in several districts needs a calendar per district rather than one national deadline. For a new capability centre, these duties belong in the plan from day one, and the compliance checklist in our guide to setting up a GCC in India in 2026 sequences them with the rest of the entity’s obligations.

Employers face a capped statutory fine, and courts have ordered far more

Section 26 of the POSH Act allows a fine of up to Rs.50,000 for non-compliance, and a repeat conviction can double the penalty and/or lead to cancellation or non-renewal of the business licence, as eLearnPOSH summarises the provision. For a mid-sized company, the first-offence fine is small change. The licence risk is not, and neither is what courts award to complainants.

In a separate 2014 case, Ms. G vs ISG Novasoft Technologies, eLearnPOSH reports that the Madras High Court directed a Chennai company to pay Rs.1.68 crore in damages to an aggrieved woman. The statutory fine is rarely the largest cost of a mishandled POSH complaint.

Procedural lapses are what get POSH inquiry reports set aside

Internal Committee reports are frequently challenged in the High Courts through writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution, and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas reports that many are set aside for not following the principles of natural justice. No published count or rate of such challenges exists. A set-aside report means a rerun inquiry, a complainant who waits twice and a respondent with a grievance of their own.

Practitioners point to a short list of recurring failures, and an employer controls every one of them:

• Committees that exist on paper. Esplora Legal lists committees that do not function independently, inquiries delayed beyond 90 days, missing annual reports and no documented inquiry procedure among the most common failures. None of these concerns the merits of a complaint, and each is fixable before one arrives.

• Inquiries against senior leaders. Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has flagged that committee members hesitate to run a fair inquiry when the respondent is the CEO or CFO. Astravise’s view is that the fix is structural: an agreed protocol for adding an independent member when the respondent outranks the committee.

• Confidentiality leaks. The same analysis observes that information invariably leaks within the organisation or to the media. A committee that limits the case file to named members, and minutes who saw what, can at least show it took the duty seriously.

• Untrained committee members. Md. Imran Wahab’s 2024 paper in IJFMR argues that insufficient training of Internal Committee members is a key implementation weakness. Training on Rule 6 procedure, rather than general awareness sessions, is what keeps a report standing.

Delay compounds every one of these. Pending complaints at listed companies rose from 174 in FY22 to 455 in FY24, per Forbes India’s analysis of Prime Database data, which Prime Database partly attributes to more complaints being filed. Financial services accounted for about 36 percent of complaints and nearly 46 percent of pending cases over FY22 to FY24, though those shares are not adjusted for each sector’s workforce size.

Sources

1. POSH Compliance for Employers in India (2026): Complete Legal & Regulatory Guide (Esplora Legal)

2. All you need to know about POSH Act (eLearnPOSH)

3. POSH Act – Implementational Challenges | India Corporate Law (Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (India Corporate Law blog))

4. POSH Full Form, Meaning & POSH Act Explained (Complete Guide) (greytHR, 2026-06-24)

5. POSH Act Compliance in India — ICC, Rules & Penalty | Beacon Filing (Beacon Filing (citing the POSH Act, 2013), 2026-09-01)

6. PoSH ACT COMPLIANCE CHECKLIST(COMPERHENSIVE) | Gurugram | India (District Administration Gurugram (District Officer, POSH Act, 2013-cum-Additional Deputy Commissioner, Gurugram))

7. Rising backlog of sexual harassment complaints in India Inc (Forbes India (analysis of data from primeinfobase / Prime Database Group), 2025-09-17)

Frequently asked questions about POSH complaints

Get your Internal Committee inquiry-ready before the first complaint

If your committee has never run an inquiry from notice to report, talk to Astravise about reviewing your POSH inquiry procedure before a complaint tests it. We start with the written procedure, the quorum and extension rules, and the reporting calendar for every district you operate in.