Cop dismissed 9 years after acquittal in criminal case, HC raps Police Dept

Tribune News Service

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, March 24

The Punjab and Haryana High Court said “all is not well” with the Police Department. The assertion by Justice Fateh Deep Singh came in a case in which a police official was dismissed nearly nine years after his acquittal in a criminal case.

Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted the order itself appeared to be “impregnated with illegalities purely for a certain purpose”. The alleged incident, resulting in the registration of an FIR against the police official, pertained to 2001 when he was an SPO. It was after much delay and belatedly that he was dismissed from the service in 2010. By that time, he had become a regular constable in the Punjab Police.

Order ‘impregnated with illegality’

• Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted the order itself appeared to be “impregnated with illegalities purely for a certain purpose”.
• The alleged incident, resulting in the registration of an FIR against the police official, pertained to 2001 when he was an SPO. It was after much delay that he was dismissed from the service in 2010.

The matter was brought to Justice Fateh Deep Singh’s notice after an appeal was filed by the State of Punjab against an order by a Jalandhar Civil Judge (Junior Division) decreeing with costs the suit filed by the plaintiff police official. The state’s appeal was subsequently dismissed by Jalandhar Additional District Judge, following which it moved the High Court. The police official was represented before the High Court by counsel RS Bajaj and Sidakjit Singh Bajaj.

Justice Fateh Deep Singh asserted the state counsel was squarely at loss of words as to how and by what means the state woke up from its slumber. “Rather, what one can come across is that after his acquittal on the recommendation of higher authorities, including the Director General of Police, the plaintiff was enrolled as a regular constable in the department. By that analogy, such an act of the appellant state reflects that all previous acts of the plaintiff stand exonerated and he has been given a clean slate. How or by what means, the Commandant of the PAP Battalion after so many years had thought it prudent to dismiss the plaintiff from service after such a long interval, rather smacks of vindictiveness…”

Dismissing the appeal after holding it to be wholly devoid of merits, Justice Fateh Deep Singh added such an order, without holding a regular departmental inquiry in terms of the Punjab Police Rules, was on the face of it rendered illegal, null and void. The state, undoubtedly, was vested with unbridled powers to dismiss a constable in a disciplined force. But it was subject to scrutiny by the courts. The very timing of the passing of the dismissal order and the absence of substantial reasoning in the state counsel’s arguments rather strengthened “the plea for the court that all is not well with the department”.

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