VIRU MUTHU SUKHLINGAM Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) VIRU Muthu Sukhlingam was one among the migrant labour to Bombay. He hails from a village in Salem District of the State of Tamil Nadu. He joined the service of the International Airport Authority (which came into being in 1971, under a Parliamentary enactment, the International Airport Authorities Act of 1971) as a Khalasi or Assistant Fitter. He rendered service, and without complaint, from 5-5-1978 to 13-8-1982. Thereafter, there was continued absence, for about two years. He has his own version on his absence from work.

(2.) HE pleaded that he had availed of leave in July, 1982 and that the leave had expired on 13-8-1982. According to him, he was then the victim of an oppressive array of adversities. Adversities, it is well known, do not, quite often, come singly. The demolition of his hut in the Bombay slum area of Kamrajngar, and his being forcibly repartriated to Tamil Nadu by the State authorities, his managing to put up a small hut when the Supreme Court stayed the eviction of the slum dwellers, the destruction of that hut too in a fire that engulfed it, and the loss of his entire worldly assets including the title deed to the plot of land in his native village, the exploitation of the situation by a greedy relative, who betrayed his trust and grabbed his immovable property in his absence, and the cumulative effort of the conspiring circumstances driving him to insanity are all narrated with a naturalness and neatly set chronology. He claims he had sent a post card to his official superior in August, 1982 intimating about the mental ailment for which he was under the treatment of Dr. Peter. It was only by 1984 that he was all right. Soon, he soughted re-employment. His employer turned a deaf ear-is his grievance.

(3.) ON 5-10-1984, he approached the Airport Authority for employment. That letter of 5-10-1984, was not favourably responded to. Another letter dated 13-10-1984, admittedly received by the authority, was also ignored by it. (The stand of the authority in regard to the letter admittedly received, is some what vague. Paragraph 4 states,