Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Dec 26: The High Court set aside the writ court judgment quashing termination of police constable and restored his termination by recording that police personnel entrusted with public safety cannot abdicate their duty in the face of militant violence.
The division bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Sanjay Parihar has held the termination of a police constable as valid. The delinquent-police constable Bashir Ahmad Mir was terminated by his higher authorities after his weapon was snatched by the militants.
The Court has ruled that the failure of police guards to retaliate a militant attack and their act of surrendering service weapons without firing even a single round amounts to a serious act of cowardice bringing moral disgrace to the police force as a whole as such the termination is valid in the eyes of law.
The court set aside the single bench order and restored the dismissal of a Selection Grade Constable whose weapon was snatched during a militant attack on a minority picket in Kulgam.
The court termed the incident as a misconduct on part of the constable and said that such acts of the police guard who was posted for the safety of the people cannot be brushed aside lightly.
The delinquent-constable was appointed as a Constable in the police department in 1992 and on the intervening night of 7th and 8th May 2016, militants attacked the picket, overpowered the police personnel and forcibly snatched their service weapons.
The attack took place without any resistance from the guards on duty, including the respondent-constable, and that no round was fired. An FIR was registered under various provisions of law, and the respondent-constable was placed under suspension. A departmental inquiry followed, culminating in his dismissal from service by order.
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