In a shocking development, the Madras High Court on Friday found Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) of having created fake documents to get a recruitment case dismissed by the court. To top it, when the illegality came to light, they shifted the blame on two academicians who prepare question banks for the board, registered a criminal case against the duo and made one of them languish in prison for 22 days.
Justices P.N. Prakash and R. Hemalatha quashed the criminal case, despite the efforts taken by the Chennai Central Crime Branch (CCB) police to “pre-empt” any such move by hurriedly filing a chargesheet on November 9 this year, and directed the State Government to pay a compensation of ₹10 lakh to G. Vijayakumar alias G.V. Kumar, a senior citizen against whom “the machinery of the police was set upon to terrorise and silence him.”
The judges also found the TNUSRB guilty of criminal contempt of court and sentenced it to pay a fine of ₹2,000 (the maximum fine amount prescribed under the Contempt of Courts Act of 1971). It however exonerated the Board’s former Member Secretary N.K. Senthamarai Kannan from the criminal contempt proceedings by according him the benefit of doubt since he had never dealt with the two academicians directly. The issue pertains to a written examination conducted by TNUSRB on December 22, 2018 for the post of Sub Inspector of Police (Finger Print). An initial answer key stated that option ‘a’ was the correct answer for question 145 in numerical ability section of the psychology paper. However, on receiving objections from the candidates, the answer was changed to option ‘b’ after obtaining opinion from D. Murthi, an academician.
Aggrieved over the change, one of the candidates filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2019 but Justice S.M. Subramaniam dismissed his case after the TNUSRB submitted a letter stating that Mr. Murthi was a professor in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Madras. The judge, however, reopened the case and recalled his dismissal order after the candidate found, through Right to Information Act, that the academician was not a professor in IIT-M.
He also initiated suo motu contempt of court proceedings. When the issue got embroiled into a controversy, the TNUSRB then lodged a criminal complaint alleging that it was Mr. Vijayakumar who introduced Mr. Murthi as an IIT-M professor. Nevertheless, the duo took a consistent stand that they never duped anyone. It was also their stand that Mr. Murthi was actually a retired math teacher of Kendriya Vidyalaya school inside IIT-M campus.
Mr. Vijayakumar also submitted several documents before the court to prove that he was actually delivering a lecture at Anna Institute of Management in Udhagamandalam on February 27, 2019 when the TNUSRB claimed that he had come its office in Chennai to collect a letter seeking recommendation of an academician to given opinion on the correct answer. He also stated that the letter was actually concocted by the Board. After analysing the issue threadbare, the Bench led by Justice Prakash, with the assistance of advocate B. Vijay representing the High Court Registry, found that the two academicians had been “reduced to a pawn in the larger plot by the TNUSRB to deceive the learned single judge in the writ petition.” They found that even the Chennai CCB had not investigated the case in right earnestness and not dealt with the claim of alibi raised by the academician. “Constitutional courts cannot turn a Nelson’s eye to a brazenly orchestrated violation of the dignity and self respect of the individual, by the TNUSRB and the police,” the judges wrote.
