Gurugram: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a sexual harassment FIR lodged against the director of a Gurugram-based company, holding that his use of a profanity (‘f*** off’) in an email exchange with a former employee, though “undeniably uncouth and discourteous”, did not constitute a sexually coloured remark under Section 354-A of the Indian Penal Code.
Justice Kirti Singh, in an order dated 18 April, allowed the petition of Abhishek Shah, the director of ECommerce Solutions Private Limited, and quashed an FIR registered in this matter at the Police Station Women, Gurgaon, along with all subsequent proceedings, including challan.
While granting relief, the court instructed Shah to deposit Rs 20,000 in the Poor Patient Welfare Fund at PGIMER, Chandigarh, within a month.
The FIR was registered on 10 March 2019. The complainant, who had joined CommerceX Solutions as Business Manager (North) in March 2018, alleged that Shah harassed her and used derogatory and abusive language against her.
The dispute goes back to October 2018. The complainant had applied for four days’ medical leave, with a 20 October company event upcoming.
Shah wrote back, asking her to get the medical procedure done after the event.
Emails flew back and forth on 17 October. Somewhere in that exchange, Shah typed, “F*** off”. The complainant then said she was resigning. Shah accepted the resignation the same evening.
The exit, however, did not go smoothly. The company fired a legal notice at her on 11 November 2018, invoking the breach-of-contract clause in her appointment letter.
She replied with a list of her own: unpaid salary for 17 days in October, two months’ notice period pay, Rs 25,000 towards legal fees, a written apology from Shah, and a memorandum of understanding.
The company did not oblige. Four months after the email spat, on 22 February 2019, the complainant lodged the FIR alleging sexual harassment.
Before the high court, senior advocate Kunal Dawar, along with advocate Jagjot Singh, argued that the FIR was timed and targeted. They said it was filed after the legal notice and aimed at forcing Shah’s hand, rather than seeking justice. The investigation, they further said, was equally lopsided. Not one employee of the company was examined, and the legal notices were simply ignored.
Dawar’s argument was straightforward that Section 354-A required something sexual. An abusive word hurled in a heated email, with no physical advance, no demand for sexual favours, nothing remotely sexual in intent, cannot be dressed up as sexual harassment.
The complainant’s counsel also stood firm. The remark, he said, was sexually coloured, and Shah had used his position as director to browbeat and humiliate her. The state counsel argued that the allegations were specific enough for trial.
The court turned to a four-step test set out by the Supreme Court in Pradeep Kumar Kesarwani v. State of Uttar Pradesh (Criminal Appeal No. 3831 of 2025) for deciding quashing petitions under Section 482 CrPC. Is the accused’s material credible? Does it knock out the factual foundation of the complaint? Can the prosecution meaningfully counter it? Would going to trial only waste the court’s time? A yes to all four is the bar for quashing.
Alongside this, the court also applied the Bhajan Lal (1992) categories, under which the Supreme Court had listed the circumstances, including mala fide prosecution and allegations that do not make out any offence, in which the high court’s inherent power could be exercised.
Running the facts through this framework, Justice Singh found the FIR wanting. “The same, though undeniably uncouth and discourteous, does not, in its ordinary sense, carry any sexual overtone or insinuation, directed at the modesty or sexuality of the complainant,” she held.
One rough word in one email, arising from an argument over a leave application with no running sexual thread, the court said, was not what Section 354-A was written for.
The provision targets conduct that is sexual in character: unwanted physical contact, solicitation of sexual favours, pornography, and remarks with a sexual charge.
Shah’s email cleared none of those bars. Letting the trial continue, the court concluded, would not deliver justice; it would only deliver harassment of a different kind.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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