Behind the landmark Vishakha judgment lies a deeply human story that is often forgotten in legal discourse.

Bhanwari Devi was a Saathin — a grassroots worker employed with the Women’s Development Programme (WDP) run by the Government of Rajasthan. In 1992, during the festival of Akha Teej — a time considered auspicious for child marriages — she attempted to prevent the marriage of a one-year-old girl in her village. The family, from an upper-caste community, was enraged that a lower-caste woman had intervened. The marriage was stopped that day, but proceeded at midnight. Bhanwari Devi and her family faced social boycott.

On 22nd September 1992, while she and her husband were working in their fields, five men attacked them. While the men held her husband down, two of them raped her.

What followed was a catalogue of institutional failure. Male doctors refused to examine her in the absence of a female doctor. The Medical Jurist at Jaipur refused to conduct tests without orders from the Magistrate. The Magistrate refused to give those orders until the following day. The vaginal swab was taken more than 48 hours after the assault — well beyond the 24-hour window required under Indian law.

The trial was protracted. Five judges were changed. The sixth ruled the accused “not guilty”, stating that her husband could not have passively watched a gang rape — and that, since the men were upper-caste and included a Brahmin, the assault could not have occurred as she was from a lower caste.

The outrage that followed led a group of NGOs, women’s rights activists and lawyers to file a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India, under the collective platform called Vishakha, against the State of Rajasthan and the Union of India.

The Supreme Court ruled:

“Gender equality includes protection from sexual harassment and the right to work with dignity, which is a universally recognised basic human right. International conventions and norms are, therefore, of great significance in formulating guidelines to achieve this purpose.”

The judgment acknowledged that the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), alongside Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution, was binding on the State. It placed the responsibility for a safe working environment squarely on the employer — and established the guidelines that would eventually form the foundation of the POSH Act, 2013.