A sting operation in 2014, a trial that never started because of a jurisdiction fight the force itself won, and a dismissal without any trial at all
Justice Kardak Ete held that practical difficulties do not establish impracticability under Rule 20, and that the period during which the Meghalaya High Court's stay operated had not been reckoned with.
A man enrolled as Naib Subedar in the Assam Rifles on 12 October 1989 and promoted Subedar on 5 July 2011 was dismissed from service on 18 October 2021 under Section 11(1) of the Assam Rifles Act, 2006 read with Rule 20 of the Assam Rifles Rules, 2010. That combination of provisions permits dismissal without a trial. His appeal under Rule 28 was rejected on 11 March 2022. On 14 October 2026 the Gauhati High Court set both orders aside, not because it took a different view of the allegation but because the power to dispense with a trial was not shown to have been lawfully available.
Operation Hilltop
The proceedings arose out of a sting operation styled “Operation Hilltop”, aired on 24 and 25 September 2014, containing allegations of corruption against personnel of the Assam Rifles. The petitioner was alleged to have accepted illegal gratification of ₹30,000 from a contractor of the force. A Court of Inquiry was convened by order dated 29 September 2014, amended on 1 October 2014 and corrected by a corrigendum on 7 October 2014. He was then subjected to a Summary of Evidence.
A General Assam Rifles Court was convened for his trial. A charge-sheet dated 7 and 21 April 2017 contained a charge under Section 55 of the Assam Rifles Act read with Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, with an alternative charge under Section 49 of the Act. A convening order of 29 May 2017 assembled the Court at Agartala.
The jurisdiction detour
He challenged the charge-sheet and the convening order before the Meghalaya High Court. Proceedings before the General Assam Rifles Court were stayed by order dated 7 June 2017, and by judgment of 15 June 2017 the Meghalaya High Court set aside the charge-sheet on the ground that the Court did not have jurisdiction to try an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The Assam Rifles appealed. While the writ appeal was pending, the same question came before the Supreme Court, which by judgment dated 1 July 2019 held that a General Assam Rifles Court does have jurisdiction to try offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act against members of the force. The writ appeal was accordingly disposed of by the Meghalaya High Court on 11 March 2020 — the force having won the point.
What followed is the heart of the case. The earlier convening order was cancelled on 21 March 2020. Instead of convening a fresh General Assam Rifles Court, the respondents issued a show-cause notice on 15 June 2021 under Section 11(1) read with Rule 20. He replied on 18 July 2021. He was dismissed on 18 October 2021, appealed on 9 December 2021 with a reminder on 12 January 2022, and was rejected on 11 March 2022.
Why the detour matters
The sequence has an awkward symmetry that the judgment does not spell out but which drives the result. The reason the General Assam Rifles Court never tried him is that the Meghalaya High Court held it lacked jurisdiction to try a Prevention of Corruption Act charge. The force disagreed, appealed, and was vindicated by the Supreme Court in July 2019. Having won that point — having established that the forum it had chosen was the correct one all along — it then cancelled the convening order in March 2020 and dismissed him fifteen months later without convening the court at all, on the footing that the trial it had fought to preserve had become time-barred in the interval.
The proviso to Section 98 is what the petitioner said answers that. If the period during which the Meghalaya High Court's stay operated is excluded, as he contended it must be, the limitation never ran out, because the Court had been convened within the prescribed period in May 2017 and the proceedings were halted from June 2017 by an order of a court. On that reading the only thing that happened between 2017 and 2020 was litigation, and litigation the force itself had initiated at the appellate stage.
“The period during which the stay remained operative”
Mr K.N. Choudhury, senior counsel for the petitioner, put the argument in two limbs. The first was that the petitioner had been dismissed without a regular trial although the earlier proceedings had been initiated to try the very allegations on which the dismissal was founded, and that after the earlier proceedings did not proceed the respondents invoked Rule 20 and relied on the Court of Inquiry and the Summary of Evidence to reach a conclusion against him — so that the exercise of power under Rule 20 was not legally sustainable.
The second was arithmetical. The respondents proceeded on the basis that trial by a General Assam Rifles Court had become barred by limitation under Section 98 of the Assam Rifles Act. That understanding was said to be erroneous, because the Court had already been convened by the order of 29 May 2017 within the prescribed period, and the proceedings could not go forward thereafter on account of the litigation before the Meghalaya High Court. In computing limitation, the period during which that Court's stay remained operative — from 7 June 2017 to 11 March 2020 — was required to be excluded in terms of the proviso to Section 98.
The Court accepted that the conclusion that the trial had become time-barred was central to the decision to proceed under Rule 20, and held that the legal effect of Section 98 and the intervening circumstances were not adequately addressed. The reasons advanced by the respondents did not sufficiently establish that the statutory conditions for dispensing with the trial were met. The practical difficulties they referred to — availability of personnel and witnesses, and the pandemic — though capable of explaining the difficulties in assembling a fresh General Assam Rifles Court, do not independently establish that the trial had become impracticable as contemplated by the Rule. Those difficulties, the judgment records, had to be assessed against the statutory requirements, and the authority was required to ensure that the material relied upon for imposing the penalty had been considered through a procedure consistent with the applicable Rules.
A written statement, and a witness never produced
The manner in which the earlier proceedings were used gave rise to a further procedural concern. The petitioner disputed the reliance placed on the written statement of the contractor and sought his physical presence for cross-examination. The respondents said a written questionnaire had been offered instead. The Court held that the petitioner's objection had to be considered in the context of the nature of the allegation and the reliance placed on that statement together with the other material: the decision to impose the penalty without a trial made it necessary to ensure that the procedure adopted in the earlier proceedings had afforded him a fair opportunity to meet the case against him.
The appellate authority was required to examine those objections in the appeal against the dismissal order. The materials before the Court did not demonstrate that the appellate decision cured the deficiencies concerning either the basis for dispensing with the trial or the procedural objections raised. Rejection of the appeal therefore did not remove the infirmities in the original decision.
What the Court was careful not to decide
The judgment is explicit about the boundary of its own intervention. The Court recorded that it is mindful of the limited scope of judicial review in matters of disciplinary action and does not sit as an appellate authority to reappreciate the evidence or substitute its own assessment of the photographs, call records or alleged conversation for that of the competent authority. Interference was warranted not because a different view ought to have been taken on the merits of the allegation, but because the exercise of the power under Rule 20 has not been shown to satisfy the statutory conditions governing the dispensing with of a regular trial, and because the procedure by which the material was relied upon raises a material concern about the opportunity afforded to the petitioner.
The practical effect of that distinction is that the force is not prevented from pursuing the allegation; what it is prevented from doing is treating a Court of Inquiry and a Summary of Evidence — both of which are preparatory to a trial rather than substitutes for one — as sufficient material for dismissal, on the strength of a limitation conclusion the record does not support and without producing for cross-examination the one person said to have paid the money.
The order of 18 October 2021 passed by the Inspector General, Assam Rifles (North), dismissing the petitioner from service, and the appellate order of 11 March 2022 passed by the Director General, Assam Rifles, were set aside. The respondents were directed to extend to him the consequential service benefits flowing from the setting aside of the dismissal, in accordance with the applicable rules; and in the event he has attained the age of superannuation, to calculate and release the retiral and other consequential benefits payable to him in accordance with law. The writ petition was allowed in those terms with no order as to costs.
The judgment also leaves undisturbed the Supreme Court's 2019 holding that a General Assam Rifles Court does have jurisdiction over Prevention of Corruption Act offences against members of the force. That remains the law, and it is the forum in which allegations of this kind are to be tried; what this case decides is that the existence of a proper forum is not a reason for bypassing it.