The Hindu : New Delhi News : Teacher's journey for justice lasts 27 years

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 17, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Teacher's journey for justice lasts 27 years

Staff Reporter

School directed to pay arrears of his salary and allowances between 1995 and 1999

NEW DELHI: After an agonising wait for 27 years, a private school teacher who was dismissed from service way back in 1989 following disappearance of musical instruments worth Rs. 116 from the school premises has finally got justice from the Delhi High Court.

Granting relief to the music teacher, Chandragupta Sharma, Justice S. Ravindra Bhat of the High Court directed the Directorate of Education of the Delhi Government and the Hira Lal Jain Senior Secondary School management to pay to the teacher arrears of salary and allowances for the period between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 1999.

"The payment shall be calculated on the basis of benefits of continuity in service and consequential benefits, including the benefits of increment and the pay revision accruing to the teacher," the Judge ruled.

Sharma's journey for justice began in 1977 when the school management instituted a criminal case against him for the disappearance of musical instruments from the school. Though the trial court after a long battle of 16 years exonerated him of the charge in 1993, the school management meanwhile had dismissed him in 1989 on a report by an internal inquiry panel on the same criminal charge.

In the meantime, the "missing music equipment" that had actually been loaned by the school principal to another private school had been returned, yet the "harassment" of the school teacher continued for what the "victim" said his deposition before the then Shah Commission that he had been forced by the school management to get people for sterilisation during the Emergency.

The school teacher through his counsel Ravinder Raj had brought all this to the notice of the High Court through an application seeking vacation of a stay on an order by the Delhi School Tribunal which had ordered his (teacher) reinstatement.

Mr. Raj had charged the school management with getting the stay order from the High Court by hiding several facts of the case.

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