Absent, Not Absconding: Rajasthan High Court Holds That Illness-Driven Absence Cannot Cost a Government Servant His Job — Even After Death

 

A widow's decade-long legal battle ends with the Court holding that "unauthorized absence" is not the same as "willful absence," and that denial of an enquiry report is fatal to a dismissal order.

Case Snapshot

Particular	Detail
Case title	Heera Mani vs. State of Rajasthan & Anr.
Case number	D.B. Special Appeal Writ No. 1349/2011
Court	High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan at Jodhpur
Bench	Hon'ble Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal and Hon'ble Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur
Date of judgment	16.09.2026
Citation	[2026:RJ-JD:44608-DB]
Order under appeal	Judgment dated 11.12.2008 in S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 2021/2001

 Read full judgment here: Click here.

Background: A Constable, Tuberculosis, and Six Charges

The appellant, Heera Mani, is the widow of a Constable who had joined the Rajasthan Police in 1979. During 1994, while battling a prolonged bout of Tuberculosis, he was unable to attend duty regularly. The Department responded not with sympathy but with a charge-sheet under Rule 16 of the CCA Rules, 1958, listing six separate instances of unauthorized absence spread across roughly 57 days.

An Enquiry Officer was appointed, and the Constable — too unwell to appear in person — deputed a representative and produced two witnesses, Constable Naval Singh and Constable Udai Raj, who testified that he was genuinely suffering from Tuberculosis and had no one at home to care for him during treatment. Despite this, the Enquiry Officer found him guilty on all counts, and the Disciplinary Authority (Superintendent of Police, Barmer) terminated his service by order dated 26.10.1996.

Crucially, the Constable also alleged that he was never furnished a copy of the enquiry report before the punishment was imposed, a procedural safeguard mandated under Rule 16(10) of the CCA Rules.

From a Dismissed Writ Petition to a Widow's Appeal

The Constable passed away after prolonged illness before he could challenge the termination. His widow, residing in a remote part of Alwar district, eventually filed S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 2021/2001, but by the time it reached the Single Judge, over a decade had elapsed. On 11.12.2008, the Single Judge dismissed the petition outright — not on merits, but on the twin technical grounds of availability of an alternative remedy and delay and laches.

That dismissal is what brought the matter before the Division Bench in this Special Appeal filed under Rule 134 of the Rajasthan High Court Rules, 1952.

The Legal Question

The Division Bench framed a single, sharply focused issue:

"Whether the learned Single Judge is absolutely justified in dismissing the writ petition upholding the order of termination?"

Answering this required the Court to revisit two independent legal threads — the meaning of "willful absence" in service jurisprudence, and the consequence of withholding an enquiry report from a delinquent employee.

Willful Absence Is Not the Same as Unauthorized Absence

The appellant's counsel leaned heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Krushnakant B. Parmar vs. Union of India and Ors., reported at 2012 (3) SCC 178. That precedent draws a critical distinction: an employee may be "unauthorized" in being absent without permission, but that absence only becomes actionable misconduct if it is shown to be willful.

The Division Bench extracted the reasoning from that judgment almost in full, noting the Supreme Court's holding that:

·      Unauthorized absence without prior permission does not automatically mean willful absence.

·      Compelling circumstances — illness, accident, hospitalization — that make it impossible to report for duty cannot be treated as willful defiance.

·      The burden lies on the disciplinary authority to affirmatively prove that the absence was willful; failing that, no misconduct can be said to be established.

The Bench reinforced this with Chhel Singh vs. M.G.B. Gramin Bank, Pali and Others (2014 AIR SCW 6539), where the Supreme Court had similarly refused to sustain a dismissal because there was no finding that the absence was willful, and no allegation that the employee's medical certificates were forged or fabricated.

Applying these principles, the Rajasthan High Court found that the Department had charge-sheeted the Constable for absence but never actually proved that the absence was willful. On the contrary, two serving constables had given direct testimony confirming his Tuberculosis diagnosis and the absence of family support during treatment — evidence the Enquiry Officer chose to disregard without any counter-finding that it was untrue.

The Second Fatal Flaw: No Copy of the Enquiry Report

Even independent of the illness question, the Court found a standalone ground to strike down the termination: the Constable was never given a copy of the enquiry report before the Disciplinary Authority acted on it, contrary to Rule 16(10) of the CCA Rules.

The Bench relied on the Constitution Bench-adjacent authority of Union of India vs. Mohd. Ramzan Khan, (1991) 1 SCC 588, which had settled that a delinquent employee is entitled to a copy of the enquiry report before a final punishment decision is taken, and that non-furnishing of the report amounts to a breach of natural justice sufficient to invalidate the final order. The Court also drew on H.P. State Electricity Board Ltd. vs. Mahesh Dahiya, (2016) 12 SCC 583, which held that forming an opinion to impose a major penalty even before forwarding the enquiry report to the employee is itself a clear violation of natural justice.

Why Delay Could Not Bar the Widow's Claim

Although the judgment does not dwell at length on limitation, its ultimate disposition makes clear that the Division Bench treated the merits of the case — proven illness, unproven willfulness, and denial of the enquiry report — as compelling enough to look past the delay that had troubled the Single Judge. A widow from a remote district, left to pursue litigation alone after her husband's death, was not to be shut out of justice on procedural technicalities when the underlying dismissal itself was legally unsustainable.

The Verdict

The Division Bench allowed the Special Appeal in full. Both the order of termination dated 26.10.1996 and the Single Judge's order dated 11.12.2008 were quashed and set aside. Since the Constable had already passed away, the Court directed that his widow, Heera Mani, would be entitled to all consequential service and retiral benefits, to be released within 45 days of receipt of the certified copy of the judgment.

Why This Judgment Matters

This ruling is a reminder that disciplinary law does not permit institutions to conflate absence with insubordination. For a termination to survive judicial scrutiny, the employer must affirmatively establish that the absence was deliberate defiance, not a consequence beyond the employee's control such as serious illness. Equally, the case reaffirms that procedural safeguards like supplying the enquiry report are not empty formalities — their breach alone can be enough to unravel an otherwise "final" punishment, years after the fact, and even after the employee's death.