Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: 27 September 2022 at 15:06 IST
On Monday, the Delhi High Court rejected the request to postpone the termination of Gujarat IPS Officer Satish Chandra Verma and gave the Centre eight weeks to answer his suit against the termination.
The division bench of Justices Sanjeev Sachdeva and Tushar Rao Gedela stated, “We are not inclined to stay or interdict the judgement of dismissal dated 30.08.2022 at this time.”
The Supreme Court stayed Verma’s firing decision for one week on September 19 and left it to the High Court to decide whether or not to renew the stay.
Relevantly, the IPS Officer aided the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Gujarat High Court in its investigation of the 2004 Ishrat Jahan case.
Verma was fired by the Home Ministry on August 30; he was scheduled to retire on September 30. One of the grounds for dismissal is “disturbing the country’s international relations by speaking to the media.” The disciplinary procedures were launched in 2016 after Verma denied the claims of torture in the Ishrat Jahan case investigation in the media.
In a decision referring to Verma’s motion for a stay of dismissal, the court stated on Monday that it is not in question that he gave an interview to a news channel about matters that were not within the scope of his responsibilities at the time of the interview.
While not contesting that Verma granted an interview to a reporter, his attorney, Senior Advocate Sudhanshu Batra, said that the interview was granted under “compelling circumstances.”
Batra claimed further that the contents of the interview had not been legally established.
The court refused to delay Verma’s dismissal judgement, citing the interview’s relevance to issues that were subject to litigation. The bench said that it has reviewed the contents of the interview transcripts and the investigation report.
“It is clarified that in case petitioner is successful in the writ petition, the petitioner shall be entitled to all consequential benefits of his superannuation in accordance with rules,” the Court noted.
The new date for the hearing is January 24, 2023.
While the Delhi High Court was considering his challenge to the disciplinary process, the dismissal decision was issued.
The High Court had allowed the disciplinary hearings to resume in 2021 but warned the Union against taking hasty action. Later, the Union government made a request to modify the interim protection, indicating that the investigation was complete and the competent body was to issue a final ruling.
Subsequently, the High Court changed the interim protection and authorised the authorities to issue a final ruling. However, the High Court instructed the union not to enforce the decision until the next hearing date if it would be detrimental to Verma.
The dismissal order was issued on the same day as the High Court changed the temporary protection. On September 7, the High Court granted the Union permission to implement the dismissal decision, but requested that its execution be postponed until September 19 so that Verma could pursue legal remedies.
IPS officer subsequently filed two Special Leave Petitions with the Supreme Court contesting the judgements issued by the High Court on August 30 and September 7 insofar as they permitted the dismissal order to be executed.