‘Non-disclosure of trivial civil suit no ground for dismissal’
Times of India | 20 September 2024
Kolkata: Calcutta High Court recently directed consideration of reinstatement of a CRPF personnel while noting that non-disclosure of a “trivial” civil suit — land dispute — cannot form sole ground for removal from service.
“The petitioner was not charged with any heinous crime. The allegations levelled against the petitioner was trivial. This apart the entire proceeding which was preventive in nature, had been dropped much prior to removal of the petitioner from service.In view thereof, I have no doubt in my mind that the order of removal from service cannot be sustained,” Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury stated in a judgment on Sept 13.
Petitioner Kabir Mohammad was removed from service on May 10, 2010, following a charge levelled against him of concealing land dispute case of 2005, where he was co-accused, while enrolling himself in CRPF on June 29, 2007.
The charge against him stated, “He gave false declaration in the verification roll that ‘no case is pending against him in court of law’ knowing that, furnishing of false information in the verification roll would be a disqualification and is likely to render him unfit for employment under the government.”
His advocate, Sutapa Sanyal, submitted that his appeal was rejected. The respondent authority’s advocate Chandreyi Alam said the authority expects minimum standard from a person who would be enrolled in the uniformed service. The judge noted that as per the report of OC of local PS and BL&LRO, from 2007, the complainant had lost interest in the matter and remained absent. The proceeding was dropped on March 11, 2008. When Kabir was removed, the proceeding had already been dropped.