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Terminated after Acquittal: Rajasthan High Court Grants Back Wages to Employee Until Reinstatement
In a significant ruling that clarifies the limits of the in service law, the has held that an employee who is terminated after being acquitted in a criminal case is entitled to for the period between that termination and his eventual .
The division bench of Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal and Justice Inderjeet Singh allowed the appeal of Dalbeer Singh , a constable who was dismissed from service following his conviction under , even though he had been acquitted by the appellate court before the dismissal order was passed.
The Unfortunate Sequence of Events
The timeline of the case reveals a striking procedural irony. Dalbeer Singh was convicted by a trial court on , and sentenced to five years' rigorous imprisonment. He appealed and was acquitted by the appellate court on .
Despite this , the dismissed him from service on —more than a month after his . The mistake was later realized, and Singh was reinstated on .
When Singh challenged the termination before a learned Single Judge, the court quashed the dismissal order and granted him — except for the period between termination and . Challenging this limitation, Singh filed the present special appeal.
When Precedent Points in Different Directions
The State opposed the claim for , relying on a long line of judgments—including , , and —where it was held that an employee whose employment was prevented by a criminal conviction (even if later acquitted) could not claim wages for the period of forced absence. The principle was that a subsequent does not retrospectively wipe out the legal consequences of the conviction.
However, the division bench noted a critical distinction: in those cases, the termination had occurred during or immediately after the conviction, while the employee was still legally barred from serving. In the present case, the termination happened after the , when there was no legal impediment to Singh's employment.
The Court's Rationale
The court drew support from the 's decision in , where it was held that an employee is entitled to from the date of until . Extending that logic, Chief Justice Agrawal, writing for the bench, observed:
"The appellant was convicted by the trial Court on 15.05.2017 and was ultimately acquitted on 28.06.2017, therefore, he could not have been terminated on 08.08.2017. However, he has been reinstated on 16.02.2018 and as such, he would be entitled for the back-wages from the date of termination (which is subsequent to his) till the date of."
The court clarified that while the principle from Ranchhodji and remains good law—a subsequent does not retroactively erase all consequences of a conviction—it has no application when the termination itself occurs after the . In that scenario, the termination is unjustified from its inception.
The Final Verdict
The bench partly set aside the Single Judge's order of , to the extent it denied . It directed that Dalbeer Singh shall be paid his full for the period from (the date of ) to (the date of ).
The decision sends a clear message to government departments: an cannot be ignored merely because it came late in the process. If an employee is terminated after being judicially cleared of criminal charges, the department must bear the full financial consequences of that error—including for the entire period of forced absence.
