BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court quashed the order of the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT), which upheld the punishment of compulsory retirement imposed on a Revenue Inspector and permanently withholding 25% of his pension following a departmental enquiry in a bribery case.
A division bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna and Justice Hema Kulkarni passed the order while allowing the petition filed by K Eshwar, former Revenue Inspector, from Ballari, challenging the order dated September 28, 2022, passed by the KAT. The accused was acquitted in the criminal proceedings.
The court noted that the criminal prosecution and the departmental enquiry rested upon the same charge of demand and acceptance, the same foundational facts, substantially the same evidence, the same material witnesses and the same documents.
Yet, despite the collapse of the prosecution on that very evidentiary foundation, the departmental proceeding culminated in the extreme penalty of compulsory retirement, accompanied by permanent withholding of 25% of the pension.
The court said that the petitioner shall be entitled to all consequential service and retiral benefits flowing from the quashment order dated July 23, 2019.
The period between the date of compulsory retirement and the date on which the petitioner would have attained the age of superannuation shall be reckoned as service for the purpose of computation of qualifying service and all consequential retiral benefits, the court.
The petitioner shall, however, not be entitled to arrears of salary for the said period.
