An account closed months before he joined the branch: Allahabad HC undoes a bank officer's dismissal

Finding the enquiry rested on an unproved assumption and withheld documents, the Court orders reinstatement with continuity of service twelve years after the dismissal.

One of the charges against a Punjab National Bank officer concerned transactions in Account No. 16488. The account had been closed on 11 February 1994. The officer joined that branch in October 1994. On 18 September 2026, in Mangnoo Jha v. Punjab National Bank, Justice Irshad Ali of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court allowed a writ petition filed in 2014, set aside the dismissal and the appellate order affirming it, and directed that the petitioner be treated as having continued in service without any break.

The judgment runs to 194 paragraphs and is careful throughout to say what it is not doing. It is not a re-appreciation of evidence. It is a finding that the process by which the findings were reached suffered from the very defects that judicial review exists to correct.

Thirty-four years of service, and then an enquiry

The petitioner was selected and appointed as a Clerk-cum-Cashier in a substantive capacity with Punjab National Bank, joining on 1 December 1978. He was promoted to Officer Grade-I in 1984 and to Assistant Manager in 1987. His work and conduct through his service are recorded as having remained excellent, and he was recognised in connection with an ISO 9001 certification for services rendered.

Departmental proceedings followed allegations that were also the subject matter of criminal cases arising out of first information reports. The petitioner asked that the disciplinary proceedings be kept in abeyance until evidence was led in the criminal matters. That request was refused; his challenge to the refusal was dismissed in 2008 on the settled principle that there is no bar to simultaneous criminal and departmental proceedings. The enquiry went on. He was dismissed on 1 November 2012, and the appellate authority affirmed the dismissal on 27 March 2014.

A foundation that was never laid

Several charges presupposed that the petitioner had been appointed or authorised to function as the branch’s System Administrator, and that he had used the corresponding user ID and password without authority.

The Court found that foundational fact unestablished. There was no appointment order placing him in that role; the petitioner had categorically denied it; the Bank’s own handbook told against the assumption; and a civil court adjudication referred to in the judgment pointed the same way. Once the appointment itself is not proved, the Court held, an allegation of unauthorised use of the associated credentials requires independent proof — and the material disclosed none sufficient to sustain the finding.

The charge relating to Account No. 16488 failed on chronology. The account was closed on 11 February 1994 and the petitioner joined the Mahanagar Branch only in October 1994. He disputed the vouchers and the signatures attributed to him, and the evidence of the first management witness did not satisfactorily establish those signatures on the disputed documents. Where the basic chronology does not connect an employee with the transaction, and the documents relied on to create that connection are themselves disputed and not satisfactorily proved, a finding of guilt cannot be sustained merely by pointing to the existence of the account or the transaction.

The witnesses who were not called

On an allegation concerning receipt of Rs 14,500, the person from whom the petitioner was said to have received the money was never examined. The material showed that the amount had been credited to that person’s account and that a computer loan had been sanctioned. Without the testimony of the person said to have made the payment, the Court held, the existence of the entry could not carry the charge.

The petitioner’s own defence witnesses were also excluded. The Court was careful with the principle: the right to present relevant evidence in a disciplinary proceeding is not absolute, and not every witness an employee suggests must be examined. But where the proposed witnesses have an apparent connection with the very transactions forming the subject matter of the charge, their exclusion requires a justifiable reason — and none was demonstrated on the record.

Parts of the enquiry proceeded in the petitioner’s absence, with management witnesses examined and his opportunity to cross-examine them closed, despite his standing objections about notice, the availability of documents and the opportunity to defend himself. Here too the Court declined to lay down an absolute rule: where an employee deliberately avoids an enquiry despite proper notice and adequate opportunity, the disciplinary authority may proceed under the rules. But this case could not be read in isolation from the continuing dispute about documents, and the denial of opportunity was cumulative.

Documents, and why they matter

The judgment sets out the settled reason why non-supply of documents is not a technicality. An employee needs the documents and statements to cross-examine the witnesses produced against him, to cross-examine them with reference to what the documents contain, and to argue the case at the close. Tirlok Nath v. Union of India is cited for the proposition that failure to supply copies amounts to a denial of reasonable opportunity — the documents might have been useful in cross-examination, and their perusal might have led the employee to exercise other rights open to him under the rules.

The quality point is put directly: the issue is not the quantity of material placed on the enquiry record but its relevance and its nexus with the charges. Findings are not supported by sufficient evidence merely because documents and oral statements exist on the file. Union of India v. H.C. Goel is invoked for the older proposition that a conclusion unsupported by any evidence attracts certiorari whether or not bad faith is alleged, the two infirmities being separate and distinct.

The petitioner had put all of this to the disciplinary and appellate authorities in a detailed representation — non-supply of documents, non-production of originals, absence of evidence, non-examination of witnesses, and the foundational question of his alleged status as System Administrator. The Court found those objections had not been properly engaged with.

Why no fresh enquiry

The Bank relied on the line of authority counselling restraint in interfering with disciplinary punishment. The Court accepted that those decisions represent settled law, and explained why they did not apply: the proposition operates where the disciplinary process is otherwise lawful and the finding of misconduct is supported by relevant evidence. It cannot be invoked to sustain an enquiry which has itself proceeded in breach of natural justice or upon an unestablished foundation. The principle of limited judicial review, as P. Gunasekaran itself recognises, permits interference precisely where findings rest on no evidence or the enquiry violates natural justice.

The Court also addressed the usual consequence of setting aside an enquiry. Where an enquiry falls for a single curable procedural defect, an employer may be permitted to hold a fresh one. This case stood differently: the defects were not confined to one lapse, the findings lacked a satisfactory evidentiary foundation, the proceedings rested on an unestablished foundational fact, documents were withheld, material witnesses were not examined and defence evidence was denied. Added to that, the proceedings had already remained pending for an exceptionally long period, with the dismissal following prolonged litigation about the very documents and safeguards needed for the defence. Remitting the matter for another round on the same deficiencies would not advance the ends of justice.

The relief, the judgment emphasises, is not founded on sympathy and does not substitute the Court’s assessment of the evidence for the disciplinary authority’s. It follows from the categorical findings recorded: violation of natural justice, denial of effective opportunity of defence, reliance on an unestablished foundational fact, insufficiency of the evidentiary nexus connecting the petitioner with the alleged misconduct, and failure of both authorities to apply their minds to his objections.

What a disciplinary authority is left with

The judgment is useful less for any new proposition than for the order in which it asks the questions. It starts not with the sufficiency of the evidence but with whether the charge has a foundation at all — whether the employee held the post, exercised the authority or was present at the branch that the charge assumes. Where that assumption is contested and unproved, the volume of documents and entries downstream of it does not repair the gap.

The second lesson is about the record an employer builds while the enquiry is running. Every defect the Court identified — the originals not produced, the payer not examined, the defence witnesses refused, the cross-examination closed over standing objections — was one the Bank could have cured at the time and at no cost to its case. Taken singly, several might have been curable later by a fresh enquiry. Taken together, and after twelve years, they were not.

That is the sharpest practical point in the judgment. A disciplinary authority that loses an enquiry on one procedural lapse can usually start again. One that loses it on an unproved foundation, withheld documents and uncalled witnesses at once, after proceedings that have already consumed years, may find the Court declining to give it a second attempt at all.

Order

The dismissal order of 1 November 2012 and the appellate order of 27 March 2014 were set aside, as were the enquiry findings insofar as they formed the basis of the punishment. The petitioner is to be treated as continuing in service from the date the dismissal operated, without break in continuity, with his service status restored and his service record corrected. He is entitled to all consequential benefits including continuity of service, fixation of pay, increments, seniority and other attendant benefits under the applicable rules, and to the monetary benefits legally consequential on the setting aside of the dismissal, after due adjustment of amounts already paid for the corresponding period. The entire exercise is to be completed within three months of a certified copy being produced before the competent authority. There is no order as to costs.