Punjab and Haryana HC quashes dismissal of an ASI sacked on the day of his NDPS arrest after 31 years
Justice Namit Kumar held that a bare recital that an enquiry was not reasonably practicable, with no instance of witness pressure, cannot support dismissal under Article 311(2)(b), and that an appeal left undecided for four years cannot be consigned to record without a hearing.
An Assistant Sub-Inspector with 31 years in the Punjab Police was arrested in an NDPS case and dismissed from service the same day, with no departmental enquiry. The Punjab and Haryana High Court on 2 November 2026 quashed the dismissal and ordered his reinstatement.
Justice Namit Kumar found that the Commissioner of Police, Ludhiana, never recorded a real reason for skipping the enquiry that Article 311(2) of the Constitution ordinarily requires. He also set aside a June 2025 order that had consigned the officer’s appeal to record without deciding it.
The State remains free to hold a departmental enquiry under the Punjab Police Rules, 1934, or to decide after the criminal case ends. The court directed reinstatement with all consequential benefits.
Thirty-one years, then one order
Rajinderpal Singh joined the Punjab Police as a Constable on 7 November 1989. He became a Head Constable in 1995 and an Assistant Sub-Inspector in 2008.
On 6 August 2021, FIR No. 126 was registered at the Special Task Force police station in Phase-4, SAS Nagar, Mohali, under Sections 15 and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. The allegation was that he and others were found with 350 kg of poppy husk in a Scorpio.
He was arrested that day. On that same day, the Commissioner of Police, Ludhiana, dismissed him under Article 311(2)(b) read with Rule 16.2(1) of the Punjab Police Rules, without holding a regular departmental enquiry.
What the dismissal order said
The order recorded that the officer was “indulging in illegal NARCO trade activities” and had misused his official status. It relied on a report from the AIG of the Special Task Force about the FIR and the recovery.
The Commissioner wrote that retaining him would be detrimental to the State and the public. He said it was not reasonably practicable to hold any enquiry at that stage. He also acknowledged that dismissal is harsh for a public servant but said sympathy could not outweigh public good.
Singh appealed on 7 August 2021, the next day. The appeal stayed undecided. After about four years he filed CWP-14698-2025 in the High Court.
The 2025 order and the consigned appeal
On 21 May 2025 that petition was disposed of as withdrawn, with liberty to pursue his remedies. The Deputy Advocate General for Punjab had told the court the appeal was under active consideration and would be decided within a month.
The order added a warning: if no order came within a month, it would be viewed adversely, since the appeal had been pending for almost four years.
The response was an order of 19 June 2025 by respondent No. 2. It said the appeal had reached that office on 24 April 2025, before the appellate authority’s final order, and that a revision lies only after the final order. The appeal was therefore consigned to the office.
The State’s case
An affidavit from the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Headquarters), Ludhiana, did not dispute the facts. It said that in cases against serving police officers witnesses may be reluctant to depose freely and the officer may influence them, making a fair enquiry difficult.
The affidavit added that the disciplinary authority was satisfied the officer had tarnished the image of the Punjab Police and broken its conduct rules. The enquiry was dispensed with, it said, on cogent material and not on the authority’s ipse dixit.
Mr Siddharth Sandhu, Assistant Advocate General, Punjab, argued that a man found with 350 kg of poppy husk in a car had rightly been dismissed under the exceptional power in Article 311(2)(b).
What the officer argued
Mr A.K. Virdi, appearing for the officer, said the order gave no cogent reason for dispensing with an enquiry. Dismissal is a major penalty, he argued, and Article 311(2)(b) can be used only where the authority records a constitutionally sufficient satisfaction in writing.
He added two points on Rule 16.2. The officer had about 31 years of service and a clean record, and the punishing authority had not considered his claim to pension. Finally, he said respondent No. 2 should have sent the appeal back to the appellate authority to decide on merits.
Article 311(2)(b) and the rule it creates
The court set out the Article. Clause (2) bars dismissal, removal or reduction in rank except after an enquiry in which the employee is told the charges and heard. The second proviso removes that safeguard in three cases, including where the authority is satisfied, for reasons recorded in writing, that holding an enquiry is not reasonably practicable.
The judge said that on a plain reading the authority must write down why an enquiry cannot reasonably be held. He noted nothing of the kind appeared in the order before her.
His authority for the scope of the power was Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel, (1985) 3 SCC 398. The court read it to mean that an enquiry is not to be dispensed with lightly or arbitrarily, and the authority’s satisfaction must rest on relevant material, not on its own assertion.
Gursher Singh Sandhu and the DGP guidelines
The judge drew on a recent bench decision, Gursher Singh Sandhu v. State of Punjab, decided on 1 September 2026. That judgment had examined how Punjab invoked Article 311(2)(b) in a large number of cases without following the safeguards.
It recorded that on 4 July 2022, in Ex. Constable Vikas v. State of Punjab, the High Court had asked the States of Punjab and Haryana and the UT of Chandigarh to alert their authorities to the case law. The Director General of Police, Punjab, then issued guidelines on 2 September 2022.
Those guidelines warned that dismissal orders must not be passed mechanically and that reasons must not be vague or a repetition of the rule’s language. Orders under the provision were failing in court time and again, they said, and reinstatement followed.
Quoted in this judgment too were two earlier orders, Baljinder Singh (13 May 2024) and Rakesh Kumar (25 April 2022). Both set aside dismissals where one line said an enquiry was impracticable, or where the dismissal date matched the FIR date.
The passage the court reproduced from Gursher Singh Sandhu states the test:
“There must exist some objective circumstance which makes a fair enquiry genuinely impracticable.” (para 11)
Threats or intimidation of witnesses, interference with an enquiry officer or tampering with evidence may ordinarily qualify, the passage adds. The mere apprehension that an employee may not cooperate does not.
The Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling
The court also cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Manohar Lal v. Commissioner of Police, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 363. There the dismissal order came after an FIR, while the employee was in custody, and no instance of intimidating or pressuring witnesses was indicated.
The Supreme Court held that the authority’s belief was not enough to invoke the exception. This High Court read that ruling as saying the power cannot rest on an ipse dixit or on an unsubstantiated apprehension.
Applying it to the ASI
The order was passed on the very day the FIR was registered. Its main ground was the recovery of 350 kg of poppy husk and the harm to the force’s image, and then a conclusion that an enquiry was impracticable.
The judge found no specific circumstance pointing to impracticability. No witness was said to have been threatened, no tampering was alleged, and no other circumstance was named. Seriousness of the allegation bears on whether to start proceedings, he said, not on whether to skip them.
The claim that police witnesses might not depose freely was unsupported by any instance. Being in the police force, the court held, does not create a presumption that witnesses will stay silent or that a fair enquiry cannot be held.
The order’s statement that the authority had applied an unbiased independent mind also did not help. The court held that “a mere recital that the authority has applied its mind” cannot justify the extraordinary power (para 16).
The reasons must show a rational link between the circumstances at the time and the conclusion that an enquiry could not be held. This order, the judge found, showed none.
Service length, pension and the appeal
The court turned to Rule 16.2(1) of the Punjab Police Rules. It said the rule reserves dismissal for the gravest misconduct or for cumulative misconduct proving incorrigibility and complete unfitness for police service.
The officer had served over 31 years. Neither the dismissal order nor the order consigning his appeal showed any consideration of his length of service, past record or claim to pension, which the rule requires.
On the appeal, the order of 19 June 2025 was not a decision on the merits. It did not examine whether dispensing with the enquiry was legal or deal with the grounds he raised.
He could not be denied a merits hearing, the court said, when the appeal had waited about four years and the High Court had already asked for it to be decided quickly.
Order
The petition was allowed. The dismissal order of 6 August 2021 and the order of 19 June 2025 consigning the appeal were quashed, and the respondents were directed to reinstate Rajinderpal Singh with all consequential benefits.
The reinstatement is without prejudice to the State’s right to act in accordance with law. It may conduct a departmental enquiry after following the Punjab Police Rules procedure, or take a decision after the criminal proceedings conclude. Judgment had been reserved on 1 October 2026.