JUDGMENT
A.H. Saikia, J.
1. All these writ appeals are heard analogously as they carry the common question of facts as well as law and they are being disposed of by this common judgment and order accordingly.
2. Heard Mr. R.D. Lal, learned counsel for the appellants. Also heard Mr. B. Sarma, learned Addl. C.G.G.C., appearing for the Union of India and others/respondents.
3. These writ appeals have been carried from a common judgment and order dated 16.8.2002 passed by the learned Single Judge in W.P.(C) Nos. 5037/01, 5038/01, 5040/01 and 5045/01 dismissing all those wit petitions holding that there was no merit in those writ petitions because the petitioners were not denied the reasonable opportunity to defend themselves and the power of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is very much limited in a matter like department proceeding against which the Court the does not sit as a Court of Appeal.
4. The facts, briefly stated, are that on 13.3.1999 the appellants and 8 others of Central Reserve Police Force (for short, ‘CRPF’) while serving under 60 Bn. CRPF stationed at Haflong, being the Unit Headquarters of the said Bn., were detailed as escort of one water tanker for bringing water from Retezole Jatinga water point. The water tanker, driven by one Sanjay Kr. Singh, appellant in W.A. No. 77/03, was the leading vehicle and the escort vehicle driven by one Jawahar Lal was trailing behind. The appellants in the escort vehicle were hockey players and were going to Guwahati to play Hockey enroute to Haflong. Emmanuel Herenz, appellant in W.A. No. 55/03, being he Head Constable was in command of the trailing escort vehicle and besides him, there was other 5 persons in the said escort vehicle namely Jaswant Singh, Harendra Chowdhury, U.K.S. Gurung, P.S. Madhvi and driver Jawahar Lal. In the water tank there were 3 persons namely Sanjay Kr. Singh the driver, appellant in W.A. No. 77/03, Jai Shankar Sharma, appellant in W.A. No. 81/03 and K.S. Paswan appellant in W.A.No. 43/03. The escort persons were provided with arms and weapons. While the tanker with the escort party was on its way to the said water point, the militant ambushed the vehicle and started firing indiscriminately as a result ox which 5 CRPF personnel were killed. They were the driver, Jawahar Lal, L.Nk. Harendra Choudhury, L.Nk. Jaswant Singh, constable U. K.S. Gurung and constable P.S. Madhvi. The appellants were the four who survived. The extremists looted arms and ammunition from the escort vehicle.
5. On 13.3.1999 itself the Deputy Commandant, 60 Bn. CRPF, respondent No. 6 lodged an FIR with the Officer-in-charge, Haflong Police Station and thereafter on 16.3.1999 all the appellants were suspended from service with immediate effect pending departmental proceedings.
6. Thereafter, the appellants were charge-sheeted with the allegations that while the appellants were deputed to function as escort party, they committed dis-obedience of orders, gross misconduct and displayed cowardice in execution of their duties and in their capacity as members of CRPF. The followings are the relevant portions of allegations made in article of charges :
“Article-I
“…. Out of the two vehicles (Regn. No. DIG 3390 water truck (3/5 ton) and Regn. No. DL-IG 7976 escort vehicle) deputed, with escort party was attacked by the militants by laying ambush. The above personnel instead of properly retaliating to the five of militants in said ambush ran away as well as hiding themselves in safe places by leaving the other escort, party personnel trapped in the ambush and as a result of which five personnel namely, L/Nk. Harendra Chaudhary, L/Nk. Yaswant Singh, Ct. P.S. Madhvi, Ct. U. K.S. Gurung and Ct./Dvr. Jawahar Lal of the escort party belonging to this unit were killed in the ambush on 13.3.1999 and their weapons and one wireless set were taken away by the militants, Their Act of running away from the place of occurrence which leads to their cowardice act in execution of duty in said incident of ambush instead of retaliating to the fire of militants to injured of kill them for safety of force personnel and arms ammunition and equipment is prejudicial, to good order and discipline of the Force.
Article-II.
“… .That during the aforesaid period and functioning in aforesaid unit………… They did not follow the orders/instructions issued to them as escort party Comdr. which were to be followed by them in case of any attack etc., by militants on escort party and vehicles of which they were the Commander, They also failed to keep proper command and control on their party personnel effectively by timely retaliating the fire of the militants during the ambush…… As such…….. disobeyed the orders issued to them in their capacity of commander of the party respectively and neglected in execution, of their duties which is prejudicial to be good order and discipline of the Force.”
7. The departmental inquiry was initiated under Rule 27 of the Central Reserve Police Force Rules, 1955 (for short, ‘The Rules’). During the inquiry, the appellants were allowed to file applications. Witnesses were examined. Statements of the appellants were also recorded and ample opportunity of natural justice was granted to them as per the rules. On conclusion of the inquiry, the Enquiry Officer submitted his enquiry report to the Commandant, being the competent authority. Copies of the report of the enquiry Officer were also furnished to the appellants. On analysis of the enquiry report, the Commandant accepted the same. The allegations that they acted cowardly in discharging their duties were proved add the authority found the appellants to be guilty of the charges and accordingly they were dismissed form service with effect from 13.1.2000 by order dated 13/15.1.2000. Since the appellants were placed under suspension with effect from 16.3.1999, during the suspension period they were refused any benefit except, the maintenance allowance and that apart, awards, if any, acquired by the appellants were also forfeited. Being aggrieved by such dismissal, the appellants preferred statutory appeals before the competent appellate authority, i.e., the Deputy Inspector General of Police, CRPF and the same was also dismissed. Feeling dissatisfied with the said dismissal, the appellant approached the Writ Court and the learned Single Judge dismissed their petitions by impugned judgment as already mentioned hereinabove.
8. We have carefully perused the impugned judgment and order and also the materials available on records. From the forceful submission advanced by Mr. R.D. Lal, the learned counsel representing the appellants, it is noticed that he has pressed all the grounds so put forward before the learned Single Judge into service before this Court. His argument is five-fold, i.e., 1) the CRPF Authority ought not to have decided to fetch water from the water point which was admittedly situated in the militant affected area and the said authority could have easily procured water from the Civil District Administration. Such factual situation including advantageous well entrenched positions of the militants on the high hills which was virtually invulnerable from below were completely ignored by the learned Single Judge ; (2) when incident took place near Haflong in the district of North Cachar, enquiry was held in the district of Nagaon (3) the appellants were not given adequate opportunity of hearing at the time of departmental enquiry inasmuch as the appellants were not provided with any defence assistant nor were they even informed with regard to their right of engaging the defence assistant; (4) the appellants were compelled to become the witnesses against themselves being contrary to the constitutional mandate enshrined under Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India and (5) the departmental authority acted mala fide and in illegal manner, right from the beginning of the enquiry for which the entire enquiry findings were perverse.
9. All those arguments have been thoroughly and meticulously examined by the learned Single Judge and all of them were rejected accordingly. We are in full agreement with the view and reasons recorded by the learned Single Judge in refusing to accept those submissions advanced oh behalf of the appellants. It appears that the enquiry authority based his conclusion on materials available on records and also after duly considering the defence put forward by the appellants giving them adequate opportunity of hearing. All the charges were found to be correct and proved and thereafter the appellants were held guilty by the competent authority resulting in the dismissal of the appellants. On close inspection of the findings of the departmental authority, we do not find any such perversity. It is also not a case of no evidence or material. Nor is it a case of non-application of mind on the part of the enquiry authority. The question raised by the learned counsel for the appellants, is purely the matter under the exclusive domain of the departmental authority. Rule 27 of the Rules empowers the competent authority, as in the instant case, to proceed with the departmental enquiry against the delinquent, i.e., non-gazetted officer providing the procedure for the award of punishment including dismissal or removal from the Force. In the case is hand, we are of the view that the requirements of Rule 27 have been fully satisfied and no procedural errors or violation of concept of natural justice is seen. The Court does not sit in appeal over the findings of enquiry officer unless the same is based on controverted materials placed before the enquiry officer or based on no evidence or legally untenable. The Court has to consider the challenge to the impugned order with limited degree of scrutiny in order to find out the correctness of the appellants’ allegation that impugned order of disciplinary authority suffers from vice of perversity, was non-application of mind and was trained by malice. Though, in these writ appeals, the appellants have assailed their dismissal from service on several counts, namely, perversity of conclusion, no evidence of application of mind, violation of principle of natural justice, mala fide etc., it is found from the perusal of the records that the decision of the departmental authority cannot be faulted with on any of the grounds advanced on behalf of the appellants. We are satisfied that there is nothing on records to demonstrate that the departmental inquiry suffered from any material irregularity or infirmity. It has come on records that Emmanuel Herenz, being the commander of the escort party was provided with a wireless set but he fled away from the place of occurrence in a bid to save his own life and at that juncture, his wireless set sent into the hand of militants as a result of which the superior authorities could not be communicated immediately about the ambush. As regards other two appellants namely the driver Sanjya Kr. Singh and Constable K.S. Paswan, without caring to know the fate of other colleagues also vanished from the scene with their vehicle. Being a member of a disciplined force like CRPF, the appellants were expected to display their courage and valour in any eventuality.
10. It is accepted that in a departmental proceeding, if there is some evidence which fan reasonably support the binding of the enquiry authority, the Court in the exercise of its writ jurisdiction would not reverse such finding on mere challenge of insufficiency of evidence. Where the findings of the disciplinary authority are based on some evidence, the Court cannot reappreciate the evidence and substitute its own findings.
11. In the case of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay v. Shashikant S. Patil and Anr. (AIR 2000 SCC 22), the Apex Court in paragraph 16 at page 26, laying down the law on the scope of judicial review of departmental proceeding, held as under :
“…. Interference with the decision of departmental authorities can be permitted, while exercising jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution if such authority had held proceedings in violation of the principles of natural justice or in violation of statutory regulations prescribing the mode of such inquiry or if the decision of the authority is vitiated by the considerations extraneous to the evidence and merits of the case, or if the conclusion made by the authority, on the very face of it, is wholly arbitrary or capricious that no reasonable person could have arrived at such a conclusion, or grounds very similar to the above. But we cannot overlook that the departmental authority (in this case the Disciplinary Committee of the High Court) is the sole judge of the facts, if the inquiry has been properly conducted. The settled legal position is that if there is some legal evidence in which the findings can be based, then adequacy or even reliability of that evidence is not a matter for canvassing before the High Court in a writ petition riled under Article 226 of the Constitution.”
12. Recently in another case reported in (2003) 3 SCC 583 (Lalit Popli v. Canara Bank and Ors.), the Supreme Court in paragraph 17 at Para 591 observed :
“…. While exercising jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution the High Court does not act as an appellate authority. Its jurisdiction in circumscribed by limits of judicial review to correct errors of law or procedural errors leading to manifest injustice or violation of principles of natural justice. Judicial review is not akin to adjudication of the case on merits as an appellate authority.”
13. Having regard to the judicial authorities above-referred and on overall consideration of the issue involved in this batch of appeals, we do concur with the findings recorded by the learned Single Judge and find no valid or goods reason to interfere with the impugned judgment.
14. Consequently, these appeals fail and stand dismissed. The parties are directed to bear their own costs.