MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court dismissed the Tamil Nadu government's appeal against an order directing the appointment of a Jail Warden aspirant, holding that an acquittal for lack of evidence could qualify as an 'honourable acquittal' for recruitment purposes.
The aspirant, R Dinesh, faced trial in a case arising from the 2017 Jallikattu agitation, the state’s bull-taming sport. A Division Bench of Justices CV Karthikeyan and R Sakthivel, who heard the case, directed the authorities to comply with the single judge’s order and appoint him within 12 weeks.
As per the proceedings, the recruitment authorities had rejected Dinesh's candidature under GO Ms No. 1410, which says a person acquitted on the benefit of doubt, or because the complainant turned hostile, shall be treated as having been involved in a criminal case for recruitment purposes.
The Bench, however, held that Dinesh qualified as 'honourably acquitted', noting that the expression appears neither in the Code of Criminal Procedure nor in the Indian Penal Code, but has evolved through judicial pronouncements.
It referred to a Supreme Court judgment stating that when the accused is acquitted after full consideration of the prosecution case, and the prosecution miserably fails to prove the charges leveled against the accused, it can be said that the accused was 'honourably acquitted'.
The Sessions Court had acquitted Dinesh and others of charges of unlawfully assembling during the agitation, pelting stones at police personnel causing simple injuries and damaging vehicles in 2017, it noted. The acquittal was not due to any lapse by the prosecution, a compromise or a technicality, but purely due to lack of evidence, the judges observed.
After being informed that the prosecution had examined 24 witnesses, the High Court went through the depositions available on the e-Courts website and found that none of the witnesses identified any of the accused, including the writ petitioners.
Further pointing out that the Sessions Court had also relied on a February 2021 Government Order recording a policy decision to withdraw 308 cases registered during the 2017 Jallikattu protests, the Bench said it applies to Dinesh’s case as well, as the offences alleged against him were under the Tamil Nadu Property (Prevention of Damage and Loss) Act, 1992.
The Bench further noted that Dinesh had disclosed the criminal case in his recruitment application dated August 1, 2022, about four months after his acquittal on April 19, 2022. Hence, the writ petitioner's acquittal qualifies as an 'honourable acquittal' in the context of service jurisprudence.