Dipankar Datta - (1.) We are seized of two writ petitions involving common parties. The issue arising therein for decision is also common, as would appear from the discussions infra. We, therefore, propose to decide these writ petitions by this common judgment and order.
(2.) The central issue requiring a decision on these writ petitions is, whether refusal to grant interim relief to the petitioner by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Calcutta Bench (hereafter 'the tribunal') is justified or not. This issue emerges from an issue of law which, however, is not too uncommon. Time and again, such issue having arisen before the Supreme Court, law has been laid down in clear terms and it is our duty to apply such law here.
(3.) At the time the writ petitions were received by this Court in 2010, the coordinate Bench was urged to consider whether the tribunal was right in its approach in not staying the departmental proceedings (two in number) initiated against the petitioner, thereby allowing the same to continue simultaneously with the two criminal proceedings which were continuing in the criminal court. During the several years that have passed since admission of the writ petitions, much water has flown down the Ganges. The criminal court has pronounced the petitioner 'not guilty' in one of the two criminal cases where she stood trial for over a decade. The other case is yet to be finalized. The factual matrix, because of such development, has been altered insofar as one of the writ petitions is concerned. However, in the changed circumstances, what has been argued before us on behalf of the petitioner is, what would be the effect of an acquittal of an accused recorded by a competent criminal court on a departmental proceeding, where such accused is the charged employee, and when the incidents, which happen to be the source of the departmental charge-sheet and the criminal trial, is the same, the witnesses who would support the version of the management in the departmental proceedings and in favour of the prosecution of the trial have deposed in the trial are the same, and the documentary evidence to be relied on in the departmental proceedings is the same evidence that was led before the criminal court?;