The main legal point established in the judgment is that there is no legal bar for simultaneous departmental inquiry and criminal proceedings, unless the charges are extremely serious and grave, requiring judicial determination over domestic inquiry proceedings.

( 1 ) THE petitioner is working as a Head cashier in Bank of Baroda and is posted in tanda Shahabad Branch, in District Rampur. It transpires that an account holder in the bank filed a complaint against the petitioner and two others for committing a fraud in his account. Based on the F. I. R. , an investigation was made and a report was submitted to the Competent court. The Court took cognizance of the said report and a case was registered as Crime case no. 1402 of 2003 under Sections 218, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 409 I. P. C. which is pending in the Court of Judicial Magistrate, Rampur. The respondent-bank also made an in house inquiry and the disciplinary authority by an order dated October 8, 2003 issued a charge-sheet. The petitioner alleges that subject-matter of the charge-sheet in the domestic inquiry proceedings and that pending before the Criminal Court is one and the same and further contended that the evidence in both the proceedings would be the same and if the departmental proceedings are allowed to continue, the original documents which are lying in the Criminal Court would not be produced and that the domestic inquiry would continue without the production of the original documents. The petitioner therefore, prayed that the domestic inquiry proceedings should be stayed till the decision in Crime Case No. 1402 of 2003, pending in the Court of Judicial magistrate, Rampur.

( 2 ) HEARD Sri S. N. Dubey, the learned counsel for the petitioner and Sri V. B. Singh, learned senior advocate assisted by Sri Vijay sinha, the learned counsel for the respondent-bank.

( 3 ) THE learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that since the departmental proceedings and the criminal proceedings are based on the same facts and that the documents relied upon would be the same, it would be appropriate that the departmental proceedings be kept in abeyance till the decision of the criminal Court. He relied on the principles of "autrefois acquit" and the common law rule embodied in the maxim "nemo debet bis vexari (a man must not be put twice in peril for the same offence) and the doctrine of double jeopardy and submitted that if the departmental proceedings are allowed to continue he would be prejudiced.

( 4 ) ON the other hand the learned counsel for the respondents submitted that the purpose of the departmental inquiry was merely to help the department to come to a definite conclusion regarding the conduct of the delinquent and to decide what penalty, if any, that could be imposed upon him. Even assuming that the charges which the delinquent had been called upon to meet was in substance the same, nonetheless there was no bar for holding the disciplinary proceedings during the pendency of the criminal trial. The learned counsel further submitted that it was for the disciplinary authority to decide as to whether in a given case it should be kept a domestic inquiry pending till the outcome of the criminal trial or not. The learned counsel submitted that no such application had been made by the delinquent petitioner before the disciplinary authority and that the petitioner approached this Honble court immediately after the issuance of the charge-sheet. Learned counsel for the respondents submitted that no evidence had been led by the petitioner to show as to how he would be prejudiced if the domestic inquiry continues during the pendency of the criminal trial. The learned counsel for the respondents further submitted that it was too early for the petitioner to suggest that the original documents would not be produced before domestic inquiry and it was not open to the petitioner to contend that the domestic inquiry would continue without the production of the relevant documents.

( 5 ) IT is a well settled principle of law that the degree of proof required in a departmental inquiry is vastly different than the degree of proof required to prove a criminal charge. In the departmental inquiry the finding can be recorded in prep