VIGILANCE MANUAL VOLUME III - AP Online

DECISION - 237
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519
Principles of natural justice — bias
Interested party not to act as Judge. Order of
dismissal of Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police on a
charge of agitating against the disciplinary authority
quashed.
Krishnanarayan Shivpyare Dixit vs. State of Madhya Pradesh,
1985(2) SLR MP 241
There was an agitation by some police officials in District
Indore against certain disciplinary measures taken by their superior
officer, the Superintendent of Police sometime in Dec. 1980. One of
the agitators was an Assistant Sub-Inspector. The Superintendent
of Police initiated the departmental inquiry against the Assistant Sub-
Inspector and after getting an inquiry report from a Deputy
Superintendent of Police, passed an order dismissing him from
service.
After he was charge-sheeted, the Assistant Sub-Inspector
submitted an application to higher authorities pleading that he had
no hope of getting justice from the Superintendent of Police and his
subordinate Deputy Superintendent of Police and that the inquiry
initiated against him was in violation of the principles of natural justice.
After the orders of dismissal were passed, the Assistant Sub-Inspector
submitted an appeal and a revision petition. Both of them were rejected.
He then approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court for relief.
The High Court observed that by acting as disciplinary
authority, the Superintendent of Police violated an important principle
of natural justice, that the role of the accuser or the witness and of
the judge cannot be played by one and the same person, and it is
futile to expect when those roles are combined that the judge can
hold the scales of justice even. The High Court referred to the
Supreme Court’s observations in Arjun Chowbey vs. Union of India,
1984(2) SLR SC 16 : “No person can be a judge in his own cause
and no witness can certify that his own testimony is true. Any one