TRIBHUWAN NATH Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appeal and the miscellaneous judicial case arise out of the same matter and will be disposed of in one judgment. The appeal is by the plaintiff and arises out of a suit brought by him against the State Government for a declaration that the order of the latter removing him from the State Medical Service and permanently debarring him from re-appointment in service is illegal, ultra vires, void and wrongful and that he should be deemed to be continuing in service of the defendant as Civil Assistant Surgeon.

(2.) The facts giving rise to the appeal and the petition are these: The plaintiff is a Medical Graduate (M. B. B. S.) of the Patna University and was appointed as a Civil Assistant Surgeon under the Government of Bihar on 17-9-1947 on a permanent basis. Ho was posted at Jehanabad as Civil Assistant Surgeon and was put in charge of the sub-divisional hospital. While he was at Jehanabad an incident took place. On the morning of 10-4-1951 chaukidar Amawas Ahir of village Mainpur, police station Arwal, in the district of Gaya, received an information that a man was lying dead in a mango orchard in village Belaon with several injuries on his person. The chaukidar went to the spot and found the dead body there in that orchard with several injuries. The deceased was subsequently identified as Ramdhani Mahto of Belaon within Arwal Police station. The chaukidar went to Arwal police station and lodged the first information report stating that the deceased had several bhala and geransa injuries, that his intestines had come out and that there was copious blood on the spot. The Sub-inspector of Arwal police station, Sheopujan Singh, went to the place of occurrence, reaching there at 2 P. M., and found Ramdhani lying on the right side with face downwards in a pool of dried-up blood, He also found many cut injuries on the body. He prepared an inquest report in presence of witnesses and also a sketch map. He forwarded the dead body of Ramdhani with Abdul Wahid Khan dafadar for post mortem examination. The dead body was taken to Jehanabad morgue with a chalan and the inquest report of the police on 11-4-.1951, and the plaintiff was required to hold postmortem examination of the said dead body. The plaintiff conducted the post-mortem examination on the same day at 4 P.M. and found that there were 22 wounds on the dead body and all the soft parts including the wind pipe and the great vessels of the right side of the neck were cut along with the fourth cervical vertebra. From the nature of the injuries and other indications obtained therefrom the plaintiff gave the opinion that the injuries were post-mortem, and no opinion as to the cause of death could be given. The Sub-inspector or Arwal investigated the case, and since the culprits had not been named, he eventually submitted final report.

(3.) It appears that some suspicion arose about the correctness of the opinion given by the plaintiff, and about five days after the plaintiff gave his opinion on 16-4-1951, the then Sub-inspector, Jehanabad. submitted a confidential report to the then Sub-divisional Officer, Jehanabad, making certain insinuations against the plaintiff. The Sub-divisional Officer contacted the plaintiff and made certain enquiries. The plaintiff asserted before him that all the injuries on the corpse of Kamdhani were postmortem and could not be ante-mortem and that there was no question of "post-mortem" having been mentioned in the post-mortem report for "antemortem" by slip of pen. The Superintendent of Police, Gaya, was not satisfied about the correctness and bona fides of his report and referred the matter to the Government in the Anti-Corruption department. The allegations against him were investigated by the said department, and it transpired during the course of the investigation that the post-mortem report had been procured from the plaintiff for a consideration of Rs. 1800. Accordingly, a report was submitted by the Anti-Corruption department to the Government of Bihar, The latter referred the whole matter to the Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals, Bihar, and sought his opinion on the correctness or otherwise of the post-mortem report made by the plaintiff. Thereupon, the Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals' suggested that the plaintiff should be prosecuted for knowingly submitting a false post-mortem report,