Railway Trap Safeguards Need Substantial Compliance; Tribunal May Test the Evidence: Supreme Court

The appellant, a booking supervisor with the Central Railways, was charged after a decoy check on 17.04.1998 with overcharging a decoy passenger by Rs. 5, a cash shortage of Rs. 199 and an improper private-cash declaration (para 3). His pay was reduced to the lowest scale for five years, and his appeal and revision failed (para 5). The Central Administrative Tribunal quashed the penalty: only one RPF head constable, standing 30 metres away, witnessed the trap instead of two gazetted officers, and the appellant was not examined under Rule 9(21) (para 6). The Bombay High Court reversed, holding that the Tribunal had re-appreciated evidence (para 7).

The trap was pre-arranged, so it was no exceptional case in which two gazetted officers were unavailable; the decoy and the only witness, a non-gazetted head constable, were both from the RPF (paras 11-12). Noting G. Ratnam, which held that breach of provisions 704 and 705 does not by itself invalidate a departmental proceeding, the Court stressed that total violation of the guidelines, with other factors, bears on whether the charges are proved (paras 14-15). The proceeding is quasi-judicial and must observe natural justice; the Tribunal could test the evidence against the preponderance of probability (para 15). The Enquiry Officer himself conducted the witness's examination-in-chief through leading questions, and his generic closing question to the appellant did not satisfy Rule 9(21) (paras 17-19). The High Court wrongly raised a presumption from excess cash without material (para 21), ignored provision 705 (para 23), put the onus on the appellant (para 24) and treated Rule 9(21) as not imperative (para 25).