Madras HC: a young man wrongly swept into a Jallikattu protest case wins his police job back
The Madras High Court ordered the Tamil Nadu police to appoint a young man as a Jail Warden, four years after his selection was cancelled solely because of a criminal case arising from the 2017 Jallikattu protests, in which he had been named as an accused only as an afterthought and was never identified by a single prosecution witness. R. Dinesh, a postgraduate engineer, had disclosed at the time of his application that he was an accused in a case registered during the mass agitation demanding that the traditional bull-taming sport be allowed to continue, alleging unlawful assembly and stone-pelting; after a full trial in which 24 witnesses failed to identify him or the other accused, he was acquitted for want of evidence. The police nonetheless rejected his candidature, relying on a government order that treats even an acquittal on benefit of doubt as disqualifying, unless it counts as an honourable acquittal.
Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and R. Sakthivel held that where a court's finding shows the prosecution had simply failed to produce any evidence at all, rather than a technicality or a compromise, that acquittal qualifies as honourable in the eyes of service law, whatever words the trial court actually used. The Bench also noted the state government had itself withdrawn 308 similar Jallikattu-protest cases as a matter of policy. The police department's appeal against the order reinstating him was dismissed.
Quick checkIn DG of Police v. R. Dinesh, when does the Madras High Court say an acquittal 'on benefit of doubt' should still be treated as an 'honourable acquittal' for recruitment purposes?- Never — any acquittal on benefit of doubt disqualifies a candidate
- Only when the trial court expressly uses the words 'honourable acquittal'
- When the acquittal results from a complete absence of evidence against the accused, rather than a technicality or compromise
- Only if the accused was a government employee at the time
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Answer: C. The Court held that an acquittal reached because the prosecution produced no evidence connecting the accused to the offence qualifies as an honourable acquittal for service-law purposes, regardless of the trial court's exact wording.
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