Appellants: Indian Overseas Bank and Ors.

Vs.
Respondent: Om Prakash Lal Srivastava

INTRODUCTION
The Appellant-Bank in a departmental proceeding found respondent at fault on numerous
charges inter alia together with breach of duty as a guardian of public money and cheating,
fraud, forgery and tampering of documents. The Industrial Tribunal eventually upheld the
ruling of the Appellant-Bank but in relations of the challenged judgment of the Allahabad High
Court, five of the charges found to be not proved while the other two was referred back to the
Industrial Tribunal with a partial mandate.
FACTS OF THE CASE
The Respondent was an employee of Appellant-Bank holding the designation of clerk-cum-
cashier. The Appellant-Bank received a complaint from Respondent’s sister-in-law Smt. Meera
Srivastava, that the Respondent, without her permission, opened and ran a savings account in
the joint title of the Respondent and his sister-in-law by imitating her signatures, and encashed
a demand draft of Rs. 20,000/- which was allotted to her by Kalyan Nigam Limited in which
her husband used to work as a Junior Engineer, who had unluckily died in a road accident. The
Appellant-Bank suspended the respondent for perpetrating acts of severe misconduct at the
Gorakhpur Branch and a chargesheet has been filed against him. The charges are as under:
Charge No. 1: He has violated the explicit instructions of the Branch Manager Mr. R.N. Saxena,
who directed him to collect the outward clearing cheques before going to the clearing house
Charge No. 2: In spite of the explicit instructions given to him, he rejected to embrace the
outward clearance cheques handed to him by the officers at the clearing house before 10.30
a.m.
Charge No. 3: By rejecting to embrace the outward clearing cheques he caused trouble and
discomfort to the Bank's customers and thus put the interests of the Bank in jeopardy,
Charge No. 4: he deceitfully and unfairly opened savings bank account in the joint titles of
himself and his sister-in-law Mrs. Meera Srivastava by copying the sign of the latter
Charge No. 5: he deceptively and deceitfully encashed from the joint account a sum of Rs.
20,000/- by forging the sign of Mrs. Meera Srivastava in the withdrawal slip.
Charge No. 6: he behaved in a unruly, unsystematic and offensive manner by forcibly fetching
the print of the suspension order after seeking the Branch Manager's brief case, table drawer
and his pocket.
Charge No. 7: Tampering with the records of the branch by erasing his own admission confined
in the duplicate copy of the suspension decree and the narration in the attending record using
white fluid.
Thus, he performed an act of wilful disobedience which is a blatant misconduct under para
19.5(e) of the Bipartite Settlement dated 19.10.66.
An inquiry officer was selected to judge upon the charges after Respondent refused the
accusations made against him, all notions of natural justice were followed. The inquiry officer
opined and concluded that all allegations raised against the Respondent were correct. the
Respondent was served with a show cause notice and after taking into consideration the reply,
the Disciplinary Authority proceeded to sustain the outcome and enforce the penalty of
dismissal from service. The Respondent filed a submission before the appellate board but the
authority declined the appeal.
JUDGEMENT OF THE INDUSTRIAL TRIBUNAL
The Respondent pursued to rise an industrial dispute and the actions were challenged before
the Tribunal and the Tribunal set up a primary issue on the question of impartiality of the
domestic inquiry. Earlier the Tribunal decided the primary issue against the Appellant as the
Appellant- Bank could not able to submit original documents and most of the copies were
unreadable. But the Tribunal granted a chance to the Appellant-Bank to present the evidence
and uphold the charges against Respondent. The Bank produced five witnesses and the tribunal
opined that the Appellant-Bank had been able to established all the charges against the
Respondent. The Tribunal upheld the amount of punishment levied and rest the case against
the Respondent.
JUDGMENT OF THE HIGH COURT
The Appellant approached the High court against the order of the Tribunal by filing writ
petition. Writ petition has been permitted while sending matter back in regard of charges 4 &
5. The judgment found the departmental proceedings violative of the principles of natural
justice then no findings vis-à-vis charges 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7 have been proved, as the Bank led proof
only in regard of charges 4 & 5. With regard to objections 4 and 5, it was considered that at the
request of the Respondent, the signatures of Mrs. Meera Srivastava should have been equated
with the signatures admitted by an expert and, therefore, only a correct decision would have
could be drawn whether or not the signs on the account opening form or withdrawal slip were
falsified by the Respondent and the Tribunal should have abstained itself from proceeding like
an expert.
Submissions of the Appellant
Counsel for the Appellant submitted that the High Court felt erred in the reasoning in
administering the standards of evidence of criminal proceedings to disciplinary proceedings as
the misdemeanours in disciplinary proceedings by an employee is to be estimated on the
footing of possibilities and prevalence of evidence. There was enough evidence to prove that
the Respondent committed deception, fraud and imitation by using the signs of the Appellant,
Mrs. Meera Srivastava, opening and managing the account and misappropriating and encashing
the sum of Rs. 20 000 / received in the form of demand draft in compensation for the death of
her husband. The complainant has given flawless and unambiguous testimony on oath before
the Tribunal and nothing conflicting came out in her cross-examination. So, there is no sense
to question her testimony.
.
As for the remaining allegations, the acts led to a compelling conclusion that even those
allegations relating to insubordination, disobedience to orders from higher authorities,
falsification of suspension letters were proven and even sufficient on their own to inflict
punishment of revocation of service.
Submissions of the Respondent
Counsel for the Respondent pleaded charges 4 & 5 were not verified as no proof was guided in
that behalf and confidence could not be retained only on documents.

Further it was presented by the Appellant that charges 4 & 5 were also not verified and
requested the court to look into the judgment of this Court in Lalit Popli v. Canara Bank more
precisely para 13, which says:
Under Section 73 of the said Act, the Court can form its opinion by comparison of writings.
The Court is bound to please itself in concluding that the opinion can be adopted. Regardless
of the handwriting expert's opinion, the Court may compare the accepted handwriting to the
contested handwriting and come to its own sovereign conclusion. Such comparison is permitted
under Section 73 of the Evidence Act. It is up to the discretion of the Court to rule whether to
admit this uncorroborated evidence or not. It is clear that even in the absence of expert reports,
the Court has the power to compare the writings and determine the question.
JUDGEMENT AND ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT
On considering the submission of the both the council Supreme Court held that the High Court
erred in reaching the conclusion of the judgment and pointing, once again, the matter to be sent
to the Industrial Tribunal to now take view of a hand writing expert.
The High Court seems to have applied the criminal prosecution test to departmental
proceedings when it asked for a handwriting expert to call for this purpose. This would run
counter to the stable legal position articulated by this Court and refer to a latest judgement,
Ashoo Surendranath Tewari v. sub-intendant of police, in which it was noticed that the standard
of proof in departmental proceedings based on the prevalence of probability, is slightly lower
than the standard of proof in criminal proceedings where the case needs to be established
beyond a reasonable doubt.
Supreme court also noticed that the High Court held that only charges 4 and 5 could effectively
be upheld by the Industrial Tribunal, which in its view required additional evidence from a
handwriting expert. With respect to the other allegations, it was concluded that no further
evidence had been provided.
According to the Supreme Court, High Court has not applied the correct approach while dealing
with the case as there were sufficient evidence which shows the misconduct of the Respondent
which could emanates from the record of the bank. Thus, the other charges could not be set
aside. On the charges which were asked to remitted back to the Tribunal, it is clearly noticeable
that the Respondent had breached the trust, committed fraud and forgery as there is no reason
to doubt the deposition of Mrs. Meera Srivastava and evidence was adequate to implicate the
Respondent, which makes it hardly a case for intrusion either on law or on moral bases. The
punishment levied on the Respondent is proportionate to the act committed. The demeanour of
the Respondent did not permit him to continue in service. Thus, the impugned judgment dated
of the High Court is liable to be put aside and the challenge to the award of the Industrial
Tribunal refuted and the order of the Tribunal is upheld.