An employer cannot be forced to pay back wages to the staff member acquitted of a criminal charge unless the prosecution itself was mala fide by a court, the Supreme Court has reiterated in a judgment.
The judgment came on the appeal by a former Railway Mail Service employee, Raj Narain, who was placed under the suspension in 1979 on allegations of involvement in forged payments of the high-value money orders.
A department would be responsible for outstanding wages if it were discovered that the beginning of the criminal trial was in bad faith or with vague intentions ... For example, if an employee is involved in embezzlement or is abandoning asking and accepting illegal gratification, then the employer cannot be fined with full wages for the acquittal of the person by a criminal court, unless it is established that the accusation is malevolent, "noted a bank of judges L. Nageswara Rao and MR Shah in a recent verdict.
The court reasoned that an employee involved in a crime was unable to provide his services because of his prison imprisonment. The subsequent acquittal by an appellate court does not give the right to reimbursement of wages.
The sentence reached the appeal of a former employee of the railway mail service, Raj Narain, who was suspended in 1979 on charges of participating in false high-value postal money orders.
An FIR was presented against him at the Mughalsarai police station. The suspension order was revoked in 1987, under which he took up his post and worked until 1997, when he was fired for his conviction for crimes, including the breach of trust and deception. He was sentenced to prison for three years. However, he was acquitted by an appeals court in 2002
