POSH Judgements, India 2025
Description
This dataset compiles 74 reported judicial decisions from Indian High Courts and the Supreme Court of India interpreting and applying the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act, 2013 and its allied Rules, decided between January 2024 and October 2025. It is not limited to any single industry; the cases arise from banks, universities, IITs, government departments, and private-sector employers, decided by the Delhi High Court (14), Kerala High Court (10), Karnataka and Madras High Courts (7 each), Madras High Court – Madurai Bench (6), Calcutta High Court (6), the Supreme Court (3), and twelve other High Courts. Each record documents the case citation, deciding bench, a summary of facts, the legal issue(s) considered, the court's analysis/holding, and descriptive keywords identifying the procedural or substantive POSH issue at stake (e.g., limitation, cross-examination, Principles of Natural Justice, IC/LC jurisdiction, interim relief, retaliation). Judgments were identified via Manupatra, with section-wise indexing data (Sections 1–30 of the POSH Act, 2013–2025) collected between 01 November 2025 and 03 November 2025 and reported in a companion summary sheet. Limitations: Data was manually extracted and may not capture every judgment indexed on the source database; only final orders (not interim orders passed during pendency) were extracted; and section-level totals in the companion sheet overcount individual judgments, since a single judgment may be indexed under multiple sections.
Files
Steps to reproduce
1. Access Manupatra (or an equivalent Indian case-law database) and search for judgments/orders indexed under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 ("POSH Act"), across each of its 30 sections. 2. For each section, record the number of judgments/orders indexed by calendar year. Data for this dataset was collected between 01 November 2025 and 03 November 2025; searches conducted after this date will return additional/updated results. Note that a judgment indexed under more than one section will be counted once per section, so section-wise totals will not equal a deduplicated judgment count. 3. From the indexed results, filter to judgments/orders decided between January 2024 and October 2025 and remove duplicate entries (i.e., the same judgment appearing under multiple section searches) to arrive at a single de-duplicated case list. 4. For each case in the de-duplicated list, extract: the deciding court and bench, case/petition number, date of order, names of parties, and the presiding judge(s). 5. Read each judgment in full and summarise, in the compiler's own words: (a) the factual background and procedural history before the Internal Committee (IC)/Local Committee (LC) and any lower fora; (b) the principal legal question(s) the court was asked to decide; and (c) the court's reasoning, findings, and final order/holding. 6. Based on the summarised content, assign descriptive keywords to each case capturing the substantive or procedural POSH issue(s) engaged (e.g., limitation, cross-examination, Principles of Natural Justice, IC/LC jurisdiction, interim relief, retaliation). 7. Consolidate all case-level records into a single structured spreadsheet (one row per case) and the section-wise yearly indexing counts into a companion summary sheet.