The Madhya Pradesh government has been forced to reinstate a tribal officer who was sacked in 2007 for marrying her Brahmin subordinate.
Posted in Aaron town, 200 km north of Bhopal, Hemlata Mandloi (27), a panchayat and rural development department officer, and Avadesh Kumar Sharma (28), a contingency employee, had eloped to marry on December 28, 2006.
They returned after a 15-day honeymoon.
The authorities sacked Mandloi on January 14, 2007, on the grounds that she did not officially intimate her absence from duty.
After a two-year legal battle, the Madhya Pradesh High Court ruled in her favour on April 21. “The services of the petitioner have been put to an end only because she had performed an inter-caste marriage,” it said.
The state government has now appealed against the single-bench order.