The pandemic has reimagined how and where work is done, yet it is not diminishing the necessity
for comprehensive measures to protect from workplace sexual harassment. Instead, misconduct
has increasingly expanded to virtual places like video conferencing, instant messaging, work
email, collaborative applications and other virtual areas connected to work. This raises a critical
legal and institutional issue in India: Are the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at
Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) sufficient to prevent
sexual harassment in the context of work from home arrangements? The Act has been broadly
interpreted to cover non-traditional workplaces, but there is no explicit language in the statute
on virtual harassment which presents uncertainty during compliance and enforcement. This
article explores virtual harassment as a key area of omissions in the framework of the POSH Act.
It is not that there is no legal jurisdiction, but rather the gap between the office-centred
framework of the statutory rules and the nature of digitally mediated employment. With remote
employees, key compliance activities like prevention, boundary setting, reporting, investigation,
evidence preservation, confidentiality, and accountability are complex.