Court orders out-of-turn promotion for policeman

 The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the Delhi police to give out-of-turn promotion to an Assistant Sub-Inspector for his exemplary role in the arrest of Sher Singh Rana, the main accused in the Phoolan Devi murder case of 2001.

The Court issued the direction on a petition by the police personnel, Devender Kumar, challenging the decision of the Delhi police not to promote him out-of-turn on the ground that he had been given promotion twice before bypassing police personnel equivalent to him in rank and years of service.

The other argument of the police was that the service rules did not permit grant of out-of-turn promotion more than twice in the career of a police personnel. But the Court after going through the past records relating to out-of-turn promotion submitted by the petitioner found the argument of the police false as the documents showed that three police personnel were earlier given out-of-turn promotion thrice.

Allowing the petition of Devender Kumar, the Court said that the city police’s decision was arbitrary, discriminatory and in violation of Article 14 (Right to Equality) of the Constitution.

The Court asked the Delhi police to promote the petitioner from the date when three other police personnel involved in the arrest of the accused were promoted. It also asked that the petitioner be provided with commensurate salary and the other allowances and benefits.

The petitioner had earlier moved the Central Administrative Tribunal here against the Delhi police’s decision but the Tribunal had dismissed his plea.

Sher Singh Rana had escaped from the Tihar Central jail here in 2004. The city police had announced a reward of Rs. 50,000 and set up an eight-member team to arrest him. Five of the eight-member team were able to catch him from Kolkata in 2006.

The police had rewarded the five police personnel by paying Rs. 8,000 each. However, it had given out-of-turn promotion only to three of them, leaving out two personnel including Devender Kumar.