Telangana HC grants relief to police officer 18 years after being accused of tampering passport

The case stemmed from an accusation made on November 12, 2007. According to a charge memo, Raghavulu, then a sub-inspector at the immigration counter of Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, allegedly fraudulently affixed a backdated stamp of January 12, 2005, on a passenger’s passport in exchange for a monetary consideration of $300 (approximately Rs 10,000 at the time).

A departmental inquiry was initiated, leading to a punishment of “Reduction in Time Scale of Pay” for two years in 2016, affecting his future increments and pension. It also treated the period of suspension from March 22, 2010, to July 9, 2010, as “Not on duty”. His departmental appeal before the appellate authority was dismissed in 2018.

Simultaneously, the officer was prosecuted in a criminal court for offences of cheating, forgery, and using forged documents. While the departmental proceedings found him guilty, the criminal court acquitted him on April 2, 2019, stating that the prosecution had “miserably failed to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The officer’s pleas to the department to drop his punishment in light of the acquittal were rejected. A single judge of the High Court later upheld this decision.

However, the division bench of the High Court, headed by Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh, delivered a judgment, after comparing the evidence presented in both cases (criminal case and writ court), noting that the charges, witnesses, and circumstances were “not just similar but identical.”

The court found that the appellant was acquitted by the criminal court on the same set of facts which constituted the charge in the departmental proceedings, observing that “no cogent evidence was adduced by the department”. “The department failed to consider the acquittal of the appellant and to act upon the representation of the appellant to drop the punishment awarded in the departmental proceedings.”

After perusing the findings recorded by the criminal court, and the order passed by the respondent department, in the light of the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court, the HC opined that the punishment inflicted on the appellant pursuant to the departmental proceedings “cannot be sustained in the light of the findings of the criminal court rendered on identical set of facts and circumstance.”

“The learned Single Judge fell in error in upholding the departmental proceedings, overlooking and ignoring the findings of the criminal court on the self-same allegations,” said the High Court.

The court further referenced a recent Supreme Court precedent, stating that allowing the disciplinary orders to stand would be “unjust, unfair and oppressive.” It concluded that the punishment “was totally uncalled for, particularly in view of the fact that the criminal trial has negated the charges levelled against the appellant/petitioner.”

The court allowed the writ appeal, and directed the respondents to grant all consequential benefits to the appellant, including monetary compensation, bringing to an end a legal saga that spanned over a decade.

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