Satish Chandra Yadav vs Union of India & Ors.
Background
Satish Chandra Yadav was recruited as a Constable (General Duty) in the CRPF. While filling the mandatory character-and-antecedents verification form, he answered "no" to whether any criminal case was pending against him, but a criminal case (FIR under IPC Sections 147, 323, 324, 504, 506) was in fact pending against him at the time, arising from a family dispute for which he was later acquitted after witnesses turned hostile. When the police verification revealed the pending case, his services were terminated for concealment. A connected appellant, Pushpendra Kumar Yadav, was in a similar situation after about four years of service. Both challenged their terminations up to the High Court, without success, and then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that what led to termination was not the criminal case itself (in which the appellant was eventually acquitted) but the deliberate suppression of that information in the verification form, which goes to the character and trustworthiness expected of a candidate for a disciplined force. Relying on its earlier decisions (including Avtar Singh v. Union of India and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan), the Court reiterated that neither the eventual acquittal nor the relative triviality of the offence excuses concealment: the employer is entitled to terminate a probationer for suppression without holding a full inquiry, since this is not treated as a punitive/stigmatic dismissal but a loss of confidence in someone still on probation. The Court found the appellant's explanation that he did not consider himself "prosecuted" unconvincing, and held that the same reasoning applied to the connected appeal. Both appeals were dismissed.
Lesson Learnt
Anyone filling a government or public-sector service verification form must truthfully disclose any pending criminal case, however minor or later resulting in acquittal: concealment itself, not the underlying charge, is treated as sufficient and lawful ground to terminate a probationer's employment.