The Nitish Kumar Government has had to eat crow. Having hounded legally and administratively a young recruit IAS officer of Bihar cadre in a false case wherein he was framed by the State’s ‘transport mafia’, the Nitish dispensation has finally relented. It has agreed to follow the Delhi High Court’s order to restore his salary for the last three years, pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh and give its consent to the cadre-change request of Dr Jitendra Gupta, the 2013-batch officer who had to even serve a month in jail within days of his first ever posting three years ago.
The Delhi-born medico officer had attempted to put a curb on the transport mafia which enjoyed some ‘authoritative’ patronage.
Gupta had sought his transfer to Haryana, alleging threat to his life for acting tough against the transport mafia in Bihar.
The latest development comes almost a fortnight after the Delhi High Court on July 2 rebuked the Bihar Government for “humiliating, harassing and victimising” Gupta.
“Required decision on Dr Gupta’s cadre transfer in the light of the Delhi High Court’s order should be taken at the level of government of India. The procedures to pay the compensation and other dues to Dr Gupta are under process,” the Bihar government wrote in a letter to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) last week.
Gupta as SDM in Kaimur district was arrested in an alleged corruption case and remained in jail for 29 days. He was later granted bail. The FIR too was quashed twice on the orders of the Patna High Court and Delhi High Court, where the Bihar Government had moved challenging his bail plea. In fact, even the Supreme Court upheld the order of the Delhi High Court.
In its vindictiveness against Gupta, the Bihar government even challenged the CAT order before the Delhi high court claiming that the tribunal failed to understand the malafide intention of the officer for seeking cadre transfer which was to avoid a criminal case. The Delhi High Court dismissed the State government’s appeal against the CAT order.
“Both CAT and High Court had taken note of this in the judicial proceedings that intention of Bihar Government to resist cadre transfer is mala fide as they want to implicate Gupta in a criminal case which has been found false and quashed right uptill Supreme Court of India. CAT had even expressed displeasure over this,” said Sourabh Ahuja, the petitioner’s advocate in this case.