Haryana Police officer's punishment cancelled. file photo
State Bureau, Chandigarh. In a decision, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has canceled the punishment of permanent withholding of three annual salary increments imposed on a Haryana Police officer. The High Court clarified that the power of review under the Punjab Police Service Rules cannot be exercised indefinitely and must be exercised within a reasonable time limit.
Justice Jagmohan Bansal, while giving this decision, said that the exercise of review powers after excessive delay is contrary to the spirit of the law. The case pertains to Haryana Police employee Satbir Singh, who started his service as a constable in 1989 and later got promoted and worked on various posts.
In 2006, a departmental inquiry was initiated into allegations of fake stamps and signatures being allegedly used in vehicle registration files when he was posted as Reader to the District Police Inspector in Narnaul. An FIR was also registered in the same case, although Satbir Singh's name was not included in it.
Both the preliminary and regular departmental inquiries found him innocent and on 13 October 2008, the Superintendent of Police accepted the report of the investigating officer and ended the proceedings. Despite this, almost two and a half years later, on April 15, 2011, the then IG of Rewari, exercising the review power under Punjab Police Rule 16.28, issued a show cause notice and on October 4, 2011, sentenced him to permanently stop three annual salary increments.
The appeal filed against this order was also rejected at the DGP level. Additionally, in the year 2019, the Annual Confidential Report (ACR) of the officer for the year 2006-07 was also downgraded, which was done on the basis of the same punishment order.
The High Court said in its decision that although there is no fixed time limit for review in the relevant rule, yet this right should be exercised within a “reasonable period”.
The court found that the departmental authority had already accepted the investigation report and declared the officer innocent and subsequently initiating the review process after two and a half years without any new evidence was not legal. The court also held that filing adverse comments in the ACR after 11 years cannot be considered a reasonable time limit from any point of view.
Since the basis for ACR downgrading was the same punishment order which has been set aside by the Court, the adverse entry made in the ACR also automatically lapses. Keeping these facts in mind, the High Court accepted the petition, canceling both the punishment order and the ACR downgrading.
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