TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2014 (2) TMI 585
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....000 at about 1810 hrs, Mr. Vinay Kumar, Security Guard, at the Security Office, subjected your bag and belongings to routine search. While searching your bag and the bag containing umbrella, Mr. Vinay Kumar found a polythene bag containing chocolates inside your umbrella(eleven numbers of chocolates CRUNCHIE, of British Airways, for which we are the custodian). When Mr. Vinay Kumar and Mr. R.S. Yadav, the Duty Security Supervisor, enquired about the contents of the polythene bag, you said you don't know any thing about it. Mr. Vinay Kumar immediately took possession of the polythene bag of chocolates. The matter was reported to the Duty Officer, Mr. S. Trivedi. The items were sealed and signed by the concerned witnesses and handed over to the Chief Security Officer for safe custody." 3. In the reply submitted by the petitioner to the charge-sheet she had refuted the aforesaid allegation levelled against her. Thereafter, an enquiry was held against her and on the basis of the report of the enquiry officer holding her guilty of the aforesaid charge, she was dismissed from service by the respondent-management on 14.12.2000. 4. Feeling aggrieved, the petitioner raised an industrial d....
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....eard the learned counsel for the parties and also examined the record. The learned counsel for the petitioner argued that the petitioner was merely found to be in possession of eleven chocolates at the time when her bag was checked by the security guard but the management had not proved by any evidence that those chocolates were stolen by her and, therefore, the enquiry officer‟s conclusion that the charge of theft against the petitioner stood established merely on the basis of evidence that she was found in possession of chocolates was a perverse conclusion. 9. Learned counsel for the management, on the other hand, had submitted that though there was no evidence adduced in the enquiry by the management to show that actually there was any shortage of chocolates, which were to meant for being served to the passengers in the flights of British Airways, in the stocks of the management on the day when the petitioner‟s bag was checked while leaving her work place but that fact was of no consequence since it was for the petitioner to show that the chocolates recovered from her possession were not stolen ones and she having failed to discharge that burden during the enquiry h....
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....the fact that there was no report made by British Airways that its chocolates had been stolen or there was no record to prove shortage in the stock, cannot be a ground to vitiate the findings of the enquiry officer." 12. In my view, these findings of the learned Labour Court are totally unreasonable and so unsustainable since it was required to be seen by the Labour Court whether the charge of theft of chocolates, and not merely the recovery of chocolates, had actually been established or not in the enquiry since as far as the possession of chocolates by the petitioner is concerned, the same even as per the management‟s own witnesses was made known to them by the petitioner herself when she was asked to have her bag checked. In the entire order on the issue of enquiry the learned Labour Court did not even notice as to what evidence was adduced by the management to establish the charge of theft and after simply the argument raised on behalf of the petitioner that theft was not established it rejected that argument by simply observing that it was not its duty to go into the evidence adduced in the enquiry. Since the Labour Court had failed to discharge its duty to deal properl....
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....is very limited. In support of these submissions he also cited one judgment of the Supreme Court reported as (2011) 6 Supreme Court Cases 584 and of this Court reported as 140(2007) Delhi Law Times 336 and 2011 (VI) Apex Decisions(Delhi) 301. There is no dispute about the proposition urged by the learned counsel but this Court had to undertake the exercise of examining the evidence adduced in the enquiry since the Labour Court had failed to do that which it was expected to do. In this regard a useful reference can be made to the following observations made by the Supreme Court in the case of " Khardah Co. Ltd. Vs Their Workmen", AIR 1964 S.C. 719:- "10...................... The whole object of holding an enquiry is to enable the enquiry officer to decide upon the merits of the dispute before him, and so, it would be idle to contend that once the evidence is recorded, all that the employer is expected to do is to pass an order of dismissal which impliedly indicates that the employer accepted the view that the charges framed against the employee had been proved. One of the tests which the Industrial Tribunal is entitled to apply in dealing with industrial disputes of this character ....