SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has dismissed a petition filed by a Border Security Force constable who resurfaced in 2009, six years after taking sick leave, seeking reinstatement into service and claiming violation of natural justice in his dismissal.
KL image: Bilal Bahadur
Tariq Ahmad Lone, appointed to the BSF in 1995, had taken an 11-day sick leave in August 2003 but never returned to duty. He reappeared only in November 2009, requesting that he be taken back into service. By then, a Court of Enquiry had already been conducted in 2004, and Lone had been dismissed for unauthorised absence.
Justice Sanjay Dhar, hearing his challenge to the dismissal, observed that a prolonged disappearance from service cannot shift the burden of responsibility onto the employer. “An employer is not expected to launch a manhunt for an absconding employee in the whole of the world,” the court noted, finding that the BSF had made “sufficient” attempts to communicate with him.
Lone argued that he had been hospitalised due to worsening health and was later unable to resume duty following the death of a relative in militancy-related violence. His counsel, senior advocate Z A Qureshi, contended that the BSF violated natural justice by not ensuring proper service of notices, and suggested the state should have issued newspaper notices after the registered posts returned unserved.
However, deputy attorney general Hakim Aman Ali, representing the state, told the court that all notices—including the show-cause notice after the ex parte Court of Enquiry—were sent to the same address where Lone had originally received his appointment letter. Each was returned with remarks such as “no such person” and “not known”.
The court held that it was Lone who failed to contact his employer for over six years and “did not even care to know about the fate of his service”. It added that “the rules of natural justice do not operate in a vacuum”, especially when the employee had removed himself from communication for such an extended period.
Calling the petition “devoid of merit”, the high court dismissed the plea, concluding that any further opportunity to the petitioner would be “mere wastage of time” and would not change the fact that he remained guilty of unauthorised absence for more than six years.
