The situation :
A friend of mine Rajeev (name changed) was working as a Sales Manager in a Company for three years.
One fine day the MD of the company met him in Delhi and asked him to go on leave and offered to give him a new assignment at the head office in Pune with some weeks time.
Mr Rajeev believed him but did send emals to the MD and also the letters by regd post describing the discussion between them and requesting for new assignment as promised verbally.
Neither MD nor the company responded to the communications and stopped his salary and payments.
Mr Rajeev kept on following up for months and wrote to chairman of the company as well through regd post letters but there was no response.
HR department started forcing him to resign and putting pressure on him. Mr Rajeev under duress resigned and sent a three months notice to the company as per the terms of appointment letter.
Company did not respond at all.
Later Mr Rajeev met a lawyer who advised him to withdraw the resignation , which Mr Rajeev did and asked for reinstatement in Job.
Company did not respond to this as well.
Many months passed. The lawyer sent the legal notice to the company. Company replied that the resignation was accepted on 8th August 2004 and claimed that acceptance was sent by UPC whereas the employee had resigned on 18th August 2004.
A civil suit of reinstatement was filed but case dregged in court till 2009 Oct and case was dismissed.
A subsequent appeal was filed by the same lawyer.
In this case I have the following queries :
1. Has the case been filed correctly or should have been filed under contract act as the employer employee relation is governed by employment contract under Indian Contract Act ? The employer has used coersion in the form of stopping the pay of the employee to extract an offer to resign from the services.
Under these circumstances I feel (readers please correct me if I am wrong) that the very offer of the employee to resign was under coersion hence the offer to resign stands null and void.
This establishes that the resignation and acceptance (even if fabricated by the employer later on) both stand null and void and employee should be considered still in the employment.
2. Since the employer abruptly stopped the salary of the employee without any notice or reasoning, can a belated F.I.R. / criminal case be filed against the employer and "under what sections of IPC/ CRPC".
3. If there is already a civil suit going on against the employer, can the employee file a fresh FIR against the employer in a criminal case, and under what sections.
4. Can the employee file a new suit now to claim damages / specific relief under these circumstances as an illegal action of the employer has caused mental harassment / career came to an end . Employee not getting employment anywhere due to ongoing civil suit.
The employee has no income to support himself and his family and is totally broke and on the roads.
Under these circumstances what the employee Mr Rajeev can do now to have a life of dignity under Indian Constitution.
