Premature retirement: No relief to judicial officer who ‘erred’ in 53 drug judgments
The high court bench of justices AB Chaudhari and Anil Kshetarpal said it was fully convinced that the Punjab decision on his compulsory retirement was “fully justified” on the recommendation of high court.
The Punjab and Haryana high court has upheld premature retirement of an additional district and sessions judge-level officer who was holding fast track courts to deal with drug cases and reportedly erred in 53 judgments.
The high court bench of justices AB Chaudhari and Anil Kshetarpal said it was fully convinced that the Punjab decision on his compulsory retirement was “fully justified” on the recommendation of high court.
Krishan Kumar Bansal, 55, was prematurely retired on April 20, 2018, by the Punjab government. Bansal, was elevated as additional district and sessions judge in November 2012 and posted as fast track court judge, Gurdaspur, to deal with NDPS cases.
He had told the court that the mistakes were inadvertent and there was no irregularity or mala fide intention on his part.
However, upon inspections the high court had found that there was serious anomaly in 53 cases decided by him. In deciding 29 cases the name of the ‘salt’ was not mentioned anywhere in the judgment and in 24 cases there was no mention about the ‘quantity’ of the contraband (commercial/non-commercial) and in six cases the sentence awarded was below the mandatory sentence of 10 years provided under the NDPS Act.
The court observed that mentioning of two aspects (salt and quantity) was “heart and soul” of any judgment in the drug cases. “One can understand a lapse through inadvertence by mistake or so called bona fide mistake in one or two cases but one cannot believe that in a short span of one or two years it would happen in multiple number of cases,” the court said, adding that a special judge court is of very high responsibility and to say that in the 53 cases, the mistake occurred through inadvertence would be wholly misleading and rather deliberate attempt to divert the attention by a ‘lame excuse’.
The court found that when the judge in question delivered these judgments, on multiple occasions, he dealt with some other drug cases also wherein there was no such an error.
