Supreme Court provides relief to railway clerk

Ten years after he was accused of overcharging a decoy passenger Rs5, a senior booking clerk posted at a Mumbai railway station heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday as the Supreme Court quashed the railway authority’s order downgrading him to the least salary grade.

Moni Shankar’s 10-year-old trauma started with departmental proceedings after he was caught red-handed overcharging a decoy passenger. The proceedings lasted for four years and ended with Shankar’s salary being downgraded.

In 2003, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) quashed the salary cut on procedural grounds. But the Bombay High Court overturned the CAT order saying it had exceeded its power by looking into the evidence attributed against him in the departmental proceedings.

Dismissing the central government’s appeal, a SC bench comprising Justice SB Sinha and Justice VS Sirpurkar imposed a cost of Rs25,000 on the authorities saying this amount would compensate Shankar for the litigation fee he paid all these years.

The court said that the decoy passenger, who was a key player in the trap laid to catch Shankar red-handed, had collected the cash without protesting the Rs5 shortfall. He returned after half-an-hour with a vigilance officer to the booking window and complained of being overcharged.

The authorities had ignored all norms provided in the rules and “the approach of HC, in our opinion, was not entirely correct”, the court said. Upholding the CAT order, the judge said, “If the safeguards are provided to avoid false implication of a railway employee, the procedures laid down therein could not have been given a complete go by.”