Incompetence in investigation and verification of academic qualifications can lead to unjust consequences for the accused.

JUDGMENT :

ASHUTOSH KUMAR, J.

1. Heard Mr. Prince Kumar Mishra, the learned Advocate for the petitioner and Mr. Ran Vijay Prasad Singh, the learned AC to GA-XII for the State. The Vigilance Department is represented by Mr. Anjani Kumar, the learned Senior Advocate assisted by Ms. Archana Palkar Khopde and Mr. Arvind Kumar, the learned Advocates. Mr. Girijesh Kumar, the learned Advocate has appeared on behalf of the Bihar School Examination Board.

2. The petitioner has approached this Court for a direction to the respondents to consider her certificate of Teacher Eligibility Test (in short the TET) as valid and genuine as the same has been issued by the Bihar School Examination Board, Patna (in short the BSEB) after the petitioner had passed the TET Examination, 2011 successfully and further for a direction to the respondents to pay the arrears of the salary since November, 2018 till date as the same is not being paid to her on the pretext of an investigation pending against her.

3. The charge against the petitioner is of having obtained employment on the basis of forged and fabricated TET certificate.

4. The background to this litigation is that in one of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) cases, it was found that undeserving persons with forged degrees had obtained employment. Under the orders of this Court, an enquiry was instituted with the mandate to find out and identify such teachers who had used the forged academic qualification degrees for obtaining such appointment. Consequently, an F.I.R. was lodged in which the petitioner has also been arraigned as one of the accused person.

5. So far as the charge against the petitioner is concerned, it is limited to the extent that she is said to have passed in Paper-II of the TET examination, even when she was shown to have failed in Paper-I.

6. It has been argued on behalf of the petitioner that because of her having failed in Paper-I, it was presumed that her passing in Paper-II was anomalous and it hinted at the certificate being forged; for the reason that anybody who has failed in the first paper would not be permitted to appear in the second paper or even if he/she is permitted to appear in the second paper, the result would not be published unless both the papers are cleared.

7. In order to dispel this confusion, the counsel for the petitioner has drawn the attention of this Court to the entire scheme of the TET examination, which, inter-alia, provides that for persons desirous of being appointed as teachers for Class-VI to VIII, they are required to pass in Paper-I only, whereas aspirants for being appointed as teachers in Class-I to V would be required to pass in Paper-II. Any candidate passing in Paper-I and Paper-II, both, would have the eligibility to apply for teachers for all the classes. This necessarily implies that if the petitioner has passed in Paper-II, she is eligible to be appointed as teachers for Class-VI to VIII.

8. During the course of the enquiry conducted by the local police, even when the F.I.R. was lodged by the Vigilance, no definite material could be collected against the petitioner to indicate or substantiate the charge of the petitioners having obtained employment on a forged degree. However, while going through the investigation reports, it came to light that two of the officers, one from the Vigilance Department and the other from the General Police Department, were reckless in making investigations and had signed the reports in a mechanical manner, without even verifying the scheme of the examination of the TET.

9. On a complaint made by the petitioner and others before the Director General of Police with respect to such faulty investigation, an enquiry was set-up and before such enquiry committee, the aforesaid two erring police officials admitted of having signed such reports mechanically without verifying the correctness of the allegation or of the defense of the petitioner.

10. At that stage, the Court found it expedient to issue notice the Vigilan