Govt was in loop on Pinki’s reinstatement

ADGP, Intelligence, Hardeep Dhillon and Principal Secretary, Home Affairs and Justice, Jagpal Sandhu had earlier told The Tribune that they did not know about the case.  “The file was handled at the lower level. We were not in the loop,” they said.

 

As per news reports quoting the IG, Jalandhar, and senior police officials, they came to know about the case on May 20. Confronted with some letters as evidence, Jagpal Sandhu said, “We received hundreds of such applications. These were sent to the officers concerned in routine. I have not seen the appeal. However, as the letter quoted by you says my office had sought comments from the DGP, it remains to be seen if any comments were received by my office from him or any other officer.”

 

DGP Sumedh Saini could not be contacted for his comments. ADGP Dhillon, who, as per a news report, was the first one to come to know about Pinki’s reinstatement, maintained he informed his seniors about it immediately. “My office doesn’t deal with the correspondence you are talking about,” he said.

 

The documents in the possession of The Tribune reveal that the state had several opportunities to dismiss the appeal at various junctures. The government had over six months to handle the appeal so as to avoid the present controversy. Pinki first filed the appeal with the DIG, Ludhiana, on November 15, 2014.

 

With DIG GS Dhillon issuing orders of his reinstatement on May 16, there seemed to be lot more in the case than what met the eye. Sources close to the DIG maintained he followed the police rules.

 

The seven-page order of the Ludhiana DIG GS Dhillon quotes law and rules to justify his orders. It read: “I have gone through the judgment of Justice Rakesh Kumar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court dated February 2, 2013, in the case of HC Arora vs State of Punjab and others. It deals with the dismissal from service based upon conviction on a criminal charge and says: At the outset, we would like to observe that neither any provision of the Constitution nor any rule provides that on conviction in a criminal case, a government employee has to be dismissed from the service. No doubt rule 16.2 of the Punjab Police Rules, 1934, stipulates that an official convicted and sentenced to imprisonment on a criminal charge shall be dismissed. However, the second provision to this very rule gives discretion to the punishing authority to impose a lesser punishment, in an exceptional case involving manifestly extenuating circumstances.”