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Gujarat High Court
Judgename :Jayant Patel
A.K.CHAUDHARY - Appellant
Versus
STATE OF GUJARAT - Respondent
SPECIAL CRIMINAL APPLICATION 1176 of 2004
Decided On : 09/09/2005
Criminal Law – Criminal Trial – Criminal Produce Code, 1973 – Section 482 – Indian Penal Code, 1860 – Sections 306/114 and 107 – Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 – Section 3, 1, 6,8, 10 – Seeking quash of Complaint/Proceedings – Offence of Abetment to commit suicide – Illegal gratification – Demand of Bribe – Submitted that had the petitioners in capacity as Specified Officers of LIC not taken action in such a serious matter, where allegations were for demand of bribe in complaint made by contractor, there would have been ex-facie dereliction of duty and if the actions were not taken, petitioners themselves could have been subjected to departmental proceedings for dereliction of duty – None of correspondences made by the deceased with LIC there is any allegation of so-called Bengali conspiracy and he alternatively even if there is such allegation, same is self-creation of deceased himself on imagination and, in any case, even if such allegations stand, same would not result into commission of offence as such allegations, at most, can be said as harassment or mental torture or at best, cruelty which even otherwise cannot be said as abetment or incitement to commit suicide. He also submitted that as deceased was suspended in year 2002, he had enough time to think and not only that but even after issuance of charge-sheet the deceased had demanded documents and thereafter also there was sufficient time to think consciously and alleged incident had happened therefore, it cannot be said as abetment to suicide – Held, Court finds it proper to record the peculiar facts and circumstances and the general interest of maintenance of discipline as against the personal sentiments of any person. Therefore, even if one may have sentimental sympathy on account of the death of a member of Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribe and his family members, such sympathy cannot be termed and treated as commission of offence for which the charge is made in the complaint – Aforesaid takes me to examine the aspects as to whether in such circumstances law provides for remedy or remedial measure or not ? As per the complainant the deceased has put an end to life due to the departmental action of suspension and of inaction in revocation of suspension order and of issuing the charge-sheet and contemplating to hold departmental inquiry, whereas as per the accused officers the action is taken in discharge of the official duty and had the action not taken, the officers could have been charged with the derelictions of duty – Though in view of the observations made hereinabove, it may not amount to offence but the fact remains that there is a loss of life of the deceased, who was an employee of Life insurance Corporation of India. The remedial measures under the Civil Law and Criminal Law are different. The different yardstick and the criteria prevails for commission of offence, prosecution and for imposing punishment upon a person when offence is committed but when even no offence is committed and in a case where the family members of the deceased are visited with the consequences to loss of life, it cannot be said that there is no remedy provided under the law. Under such circumstances, there is a remedy provided as per the Civil Law for compensating to the death of the deceased There is a remedial measure provided under Civil Law for compensating to the loss of life to the deceased to the dependent members of the deceased. Since there is neither prayer, nor all parties to the proceedings, more particularly LIC is before the Court, I find it proper to leave the matter at that stage, leaving the parties to resort to appropriate remedy under Civil Law for compensation etc. , due to loss of life to the deceased, as may be permissible in law – Petitions are allowed (Paras 47 to 51)
( 1 ) LIFE is dear to everybody and death is painful to one and all. Should sentiments prevail or discipline for the administration of any institution ? Can sentiments be allowed to be enforced over rule of law ? Can the action or inaction or propriety of action or inaction to discharge legal obligation be said as an aid or instigation or abetment to commit suicide ? The aforesaid are the aspects which directly or indirectly arise for the consideration of this Court in the present group of petitions.
( 2 ) THE short facts of the case are as under: (i) There is no dispute on the following aspects:life Insurance Corporation of India (hereinafter referred to as SLIC for short) is a statutory body governed by the provisions of LIC Act and its employees are governed by the Regulations framed by LIC in exercise of the statutory power under LIC Act. The deceased Dineshbhai Ganpatbhai Parmar was an employee of LIC holding of the cadre of Assistant Executive engineer. The petitioners of Special Criminal Application no. 1176/2004, Shri A. K. Chaudhari and Shri A. K. Shukla and the petitioners of Special Criminal Application no. 1225/2004, Shri S. Roy Chaudhary, Shri R. K. Mishra, Shri t. K. Banerjee, and Shri P. P. Upadhyay were and are the officers of LIC, In-charge of their concerned Departments, holding different capacities, which are as under: shri S. Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director (Personnel) petitioner No. 1 in Special Criminal Application No. 1225 of 2004. Shri A. K. Shukla, now Executive Director (Pr and C C) at the relevant time was working Chief (Personnel) Petitioner no. 2 in Special Criminal Application No. 1176 of 2004. Shri R. K. Mishra, now in Central Office as superintending Engineer, the then Executive Engineer, ahmedabad Divisional Office Petitioner No. 2 in Special criminal Application No. 1225/2004. Shri T. K. Banerjee, Zonal Manager, Western Zone, Mumbai, now Member, IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development authority), Hyderabad Petitioner No. 3 in Special Criminal application No. 1225 of 2004shri A. K. Chaudhary, the then Senior Divisional Manager, rajkot, now on deputation in the Office of Ombudsman, at ahmedabad Petitioner No. 1 in Special Criminal Application no. 1176 of 2004. Shri P. B. Upadhyay, now Faulty Member, Divisional training Centre, Rajkot, the then Manager (I. T.) - petitioner No. 4 in Special Criminal Application no. 1225/2004. All shall be referred to hereinafter as Sthe specified authority/specified officer for the sake of convenience. The petitioner of Special Criminal Application No. 1292 of 2004 was the contractor who was granted contract by LIC for construction of certain works of LIC with one M/s. Vijay Construction. One of the contractors, who is the petitioner of Special Criminal Application No. 1292 of 2004 is also Dalit. The deceased D. G. Parmar (hereinafter referred to as Sthe deceased) was also Dalit. In the year 2000 contracts were granted by the deceased for repair of the official quarters of L. I. C. , at Rajkot as an Officer of LIC in capacity as Assistant Executive Engineer to the petitioner of Special Criminal Application No. 1292/2004 and one another contractor M/s. Vijay Construction (hereinafter referred to as Sanother contractor. There was complaint by petitioners of Special Criminal Application No. 1292 of 2004 against deceased, lodged with Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) for demanding bribe and a trap was organized by ACB, which was not successful and had failed, in the month of August, 2002. There were complaints lodged by the petitioners of Special Criminal Application No. 1292 of 2004 and other contractor to the Authority of LIC, by making allegations against the deceased for demand of bribe and on the basis of such complaint the Specified Authority of LIC had passed the order on 24. 9. 2002 for suspending the deceased. There were no actions for about two years by the specified officers, though the deceased continued to make representations against the
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