Chhattisgarh HC reinstates CRPF inspector dismissed after enquiry held while he was in jail, no back wages
Justice Amitendra Kishore Prasad quashed the 2018 dismissal of Y.K. Soloman, who had asked from Central Jail Ambikapur that his departmental enquiry wait until his murder trial ended and was instead recorded as having no defence, but held that his later acquittal on benefit of doubt gave him no automatic right to his job and left the CRPF free to start a fresh enquiry.
A Central Reserve Police Force inspector who was dismissed in 2018 while sitting in Central Jail, Ambikapur as an undertrial in a murder case, after writing to his department to say he could not defend himself from behind bars, has won reinstatement from the Chhattisgarh High Court, but without back wages and with the door left open for the force to try him departmentally again. Justice Amitendra Kishore Prasad on 29 October 2026 held that the enquiry against Y.K. Soloman had been “conducted behind the back of the petitioner” in breach of natural justice and of the CRPF's own standing order, quashed both the dismissal order of 3 September 2018 and the appellate rejection of 11 May 2022, and rejected the Union's objection that the inspector should have been sent to his statutory remedy instead of the writ court.
A fist fight at Agrasen Chowk, a death 70 days later
Soloman, 44, from Senapati district in Manipur, joined the CRPF on 15 October 2004 as a sub-inspector (GD) and, after transfer from the 43rd Battalion, reported to the 227th Battalion on 6 February 2015. On 29 June 2015 he was sent to the Anti-Naxal Training Centre at Ambikapur for pre-induction training before posting to Left Wing Extremism areas; by his own account he was there from 1 July to 29 August 2015 as part of the 13th batch. On 2 August 2015, at Agrasen Chowk in Ambikapur, he was alleged to have got into a physical altercation with a 52-year-old local resident, Sanjay Singh, who was badly hurt and admitted to hospital. Singh's family lodged an FIR at Ambikapur police station on 8 August 2015, registered as Crime No. 419 of 2015 under Sections 294, 506 and 323 of the Indian Penal Code. Singh died during treatment on 11 October 2015, about 70 days after the incident, and Section 302 was added.
The CRPF came to know of the matter from a letter of 10 May 2016 from the DIG and Principal of CIAT-III, which reported that a CRPF man of Nepali appearance had allegedly been in a fist fight with a civilian; ASI A.K. Das of the Chhattisgarh Police then visited the Ambikapur camp and identified Soloman. He was arrested in 2016 (the petitioner put the date at 8 October, the Union at 8 August) and remanded to judicial custody, and the Commandant of the 227th Battalion placed him under deemed suspension from 8 August 2016 by an office order of 12 August 2016. The Union's case was that he had never reported the altercation to his controlling authority, suppressed material facts and brought disrepute to the force.
A departmental enquiry followed. A notice dated 23 July 2018 was served on him at Central Jail, Ambikapur, directing him to submit within 15 days his report, documents and evidence if he wished to defend himself. He replied that he was an undertrial prisoner and asked that the enquiry be deferred until the sessions trial ended and he could appear. The request was not considered. On 3 September 2018 the Deputy Inspector General recorded that the delinquent had no evidence or witness to defend himself, found the charges proved and imposed the major penalty of dismissal from service.
Soloman got bail on 5 November 2018. On 1 November 2021 the 3rd Additional Sessions Judge, Ambikapur, acquitted him in Criminal Case No. 108 of 2016 by extending the benefit of doubt. Armed with that judgment he filed an appeal under Section 11(1) of the Central Reserve Police Force Act, 1949 read with Rule 27 of the CRPF Rules, 1955 seeking reinstatement; the appellate authority rejected it on 11 May 2022 on the ground that no new evidence had been produced. He then filed WPS No. 8456 of 2022 asking the High Court to quash both orders and direct reinstatement with consequential benefits. The court entertained the petition on 17 February 2023 and it remained pending until the hearing concluded on 18 August 2026.
Acquittal as changed circumstance, and the alternative-remedy objection
Mr Shakti Raj Sinha, for the petitioner, argued that the criminal case and the departmental enquiry arose from the same incident and the same allegations, so his acquittal was a material change of circumstances that the authorities were bound to consider when he sought reinstatement; rejecting his appeal for want of new evidence was arbitrary. He relied on State of West Bengal v. Sankar Ghosh, (2014) 3 SCC 610, which drew on Deputy Inspector General of Police v. S. Samuthiram, (2013) 1 SCC 598, for the proposition that reinstatement after acquittal has to be examined in the light of the applicable service rules and the facts of each case, and on the High Court's own order of 23 February 2015 in Sadanand Chaudhary v. State of Chhattisgarh, W.P. No. 1344 of 2003, where similar circumstances were considered.
Mr Abhishek Banjare, Central Government Counsel, for the Union, set out the chronology from the CRPF's side, said a prima facie case of misconduct and suppression was established, and submitted that the petition was not maintainable because an efficacious alternative remedy was available; it should be dismissed. The judgment records, in the same breath, the Union counsel's acknowledgment that the debatable question was the grant of natural justice, since an order with civil consequences such as removal from service cannot be passed without hearing the other side. Mr Anand Dadariya, Deputy Advocate General, for the State, opposed the petition on the same grounds of suppression and alternative remedy.
Acquittal on benefit of doubt earns nothing by itself
Justice Prasad was careful to separate the two strands of the petitioner's case. On the first, the acquittal, he sided with the respondents. The acquittal had been granted by extending the benefit of doubt, and such an acquittal does not by itself obliterate or invalidate findings recorded in departmental proceedings. The standard of proof and the nature and scope of a criminal prosecution and a departmental enquiry are distinct, and a disciplinary authority is entitled to examine the employee's conduct independently on the material before it. Mere acquittal in a criminal case, particularly on benefit of doubt, cannot confer an automatic right to reinstatement.
On the second strand, the manner of the enquiry, he found the department had gone wrong from start to finish. The record showed that the notice reached Soloman in jail, that he categorically replied asking for the proceedings to be held in his presence after release, and that the authorities, instead of considering the request, recorded on 3 September 2018 that he had no evidence or witness and held the charges proved. “Such a course of action is totally unknown to the principles governing departmental enquiries,” the judge wrote. Paragraph 14 of the CRPF's Permanent Order No. 20 of 2001 specifically requires that the delinquent be given a proper opportunity of hearing, and nothing in the dismissal order showed that any such opportunity had been given. The acquittal of 1 November 2021 came long after, but by 3 September 2018 the whole enquiry had already been concluded in his absence, with no chance to rebut the circumstances found against him. The order was therefore passed in violation of natural justice, and the entire enquiry stood vitiated.
The Supreme Court authorities on hearing the delinquent
The judge anchored the conclusion in a run of Supreme Court decisions. From Manohar Lal v. Commissioner of Police, Civil Appeal No. 13860 of 2024, reported in 2026 OnLine SC 263, he took paragraphs 13 and 14 on Article 311(2): a member of a civil service may be dismissed, removed or reduced in rank only after a regular inquiry on charges communicated to him with a reasonable opportunity, and departure from that mandate under the second proviso requires a recorded satisfaction that an inquiry is not reasonably practicable. From State of Uttar Pradesh v. Ram Prakash Singh, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 891, he quoted paragraphs 27, 58 and 70 on the right to a fair and reasonable opportunity, including the Mohd. Ramzan Khan and B. Karunakar line on supplying the enquiry report, and the observation that where punishment is set aside for breach of statutory rules without acquittal on merits, the routine course is to remit the matter to the disciplinary authority to resume from the stage at which the proceedings were vitiated.
State of U.P. v. Saroj Kumar Sinha, (2010) 2 SCC 772, supplied the core: when a government servant fails to reply to a charge-sheet the inquiry officer must fix a date for his appearance and may proceed ex parte only if he then fails to appear, must still record the departmental witnesses so that the inquiry officer does not become prosecutor and judge, must act as an independent adjudicator rather than a departmental representative, and must observe natural justice so that justice is manifestly seen to be done; a departmental enquiry is not a casual exercise. From R. Saravanan v. Periyar University, (2026) SCC OnLine SC 2202, the judge took paragraph 10, which distinguishes substantive violations of natural justice from technical infringements and asks whether prejudice was caused, and paragraph 22, which describes dismissal from service as the harshest punishment, no less than a death penalty for the government servant, with cascading effects on the family, and says the writ court should not be a mute spectator merely because a statutory appeal exists.
That last point disposed of the alternative-remedy objection. The petitioner had not pursued the departmental appeal against the dismissal itself, but the writ had been entertained in February 2023 and had been pending since. Where a departmental enquiry is conducted behind an employee's back and he is denied any hearing, the judge held, the availability of another remedy has to be weighed against the violation of natural justice. He relied on Harbanslal Sahnia v. Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., (2003) 2 SCC 107, that the rule excluding writ jurisdiction for an alternative remedy is one of discretion and not compulsion, and on Sujal Vishwas Attavar v. State of Maharashtra, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 798, which restates the Radha Krishan Industries v. State of Himachal Pradesh, (2021) 6 SCC 771, principles: a violation of the principles of natural justice is one of the recognised exceptions to the rule that a writ petition should not be entertained where an efficacious alternative remedy exists. The plea of alternative remedy, he concluded, did not need to be considered when natural justice had been violated.
Order
The writ petition was allowed. The appellate order of 11 May 2022 and the order of 3 September 2018 removing Soloman from service as an inspector in the CRPF were quashed. The respondents were directed to reinstate him in service in accordance with law, but without any back wages. The court left it open to the respondents to initiate fresh departmental proceedings against him in accordance with law. The order was reserved on 18 August 2026 and passed on 29 October 2026, and is marked AFR with the neutral citation 2026:CGHC:45683. The head-note appended to the order states that due process in departmental proceedings requires that the delinquent employee be informed of the charges, afforded a reasonable opportunity of hearing and given an effective opportunity to defend himself under the applicable rules and the principles of natural justice, and that disciplinary action taken without that opportunity is legally unsustainable.