Upholding the finding of guilt against a welfare-office clerk in a scholarship-funds defalcation case but finding his compulsory retirement “exorbitant,” the Patna High Court set aside the penalty and remanded the matter, noting that he was a new incumbent who signed documents under pressure after the wrongs had already been committed by his predecessors. Patna: […]
The Patna High Court has ordered the State to pay interim compensation to a family whose house and boundary walls were demolished during an encroachment proceeding without any authorising order, holding that the demolition violated the right to shelter under Article 21 and the protection of property under Article 300-A. A house is not merely four walls but has a ‘divine spirit’, the Court observed, and its demolition is akin to ‘Brahma Hatya’.
The Supreme Court has taken suo motu cognisance of a Patna High Court judgment that held certain acts alleged against the accused did not amount to an ‘attempt to rape’, but at most to outraging a woman’s modesty under Section 354 IPC. A Bench led by CJI Surya Kant observed that some of the High Court’s observations were offensive, and said it would hear the accused before deciding. The step follows the Court’s earlier correction of a similar Allahabad High Court verdict.
The Patna High Court has set aside the Central Bank of India’s rejection of a compassionate-appointment claim by the married son of a deceased Safai Karamchari, made on the sole ground that he was married. The Court held that the Bank’s own scheme defines a ‘dependent family member’ as a ‘wholly dependent son’ without the word ‘unmarried’, and that the Bank cannot supplement that self-contained definition by importing ‘unmarried’ from other regulations or policies.
The Patna High Court has acquitted five men convicted of a 1989 murder and dacoity, holding that the prosecution suppressed the genesis of the case by withholding an earlier written complaint that ought to have been treated as the FIR, and instead placing on record a later statement, which attracted an adverse inference and the bar under Section 162 CrPC. Coupled with material discrepancies between the two eye-witnesses, this cast a thick cloud of suspicion on the prosecution case.
The Patna High Court has dismissed a civil revision and affirmed the eviction of a couple from three rooms let to them by the wife’s sister on the ground of the landlady’s bona fide personal necessity. The Court held that in an eviction proceeding the court decides only whether a landlord-tenant relationship exists, not the question of title, which must be agitated in a separate suit; that a tenancy may be established by oral evidence; and that its revisional jurisdiction does not extend to reappreciating concurrent findings.
The Patna High Court has dismissed a writ petition by a State Bank of India officer challenging his reduction in grade, imposed after a disciplinary inquiry found he had sanctioned clean overdrafts beyond his powers, exposing the bank to a loss of about Rs 49.74 lakh. The Court held that a bank officer is held to a higher standard of honesty, that acting beyond one’s authority is misconduct irrespective of any eventual loss or recovery, and that the penalty was proportionate and not open to interference in judicial review.
Answering five questions referred by the Supreme Court, the Patna High Court has examined the remission and premature-release regime under the Bihar Prison Manual, 2012 and issued seventeen recommendations to make it transparent, time-bound and fair. It held the rules are not ‘absolutely selective’, but directed that every prisoner be given a duplicate History Ticket showing remission earned or forfeited, that no remission be seized without a hearing and reasons, and that an appeal and grievance mechanism be created, with safeguards for illiterate prisoners.
The Patna High Court has dismissed a plea by members of Bihar’s Watershed Development Teams claiming a 10% annual increment, holding that the 2020 governing-body resolution granting the increment applied only to employees of the Bihar Watershed Development Society, not to WDT members, who are a separate category under the 2008 Watershed Guidelines. The Court held the withdrawal of the wrongly-extended benefit lawful, but directed that amounts already paid need not be refunded.
The Patna High Court has expunged the personal aspersions made by a District Magistrate, sitting as an appellate authority under the Bihar Public Grievance Redressal Act, against a complainant, a Sanskrit scholar and former Vice-Chancellor. While declining to disturb the order on the drainage grievance itself, the Court held that a quasi-judicial authority must decide on facts and law and cannot attack a litigant’s personal character, invoking A.M. Mathur and the ‘good name’ passage from Shakespeare’s Othello.