Civil Writ Petition No.16322 of 2009 : 1 : IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH DATE OF DECISION: OCTOBER 27, 2009 Sushila Devi .....Petitioner VERSUS The State of Haryana and another ....Respondents CORAM:- HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgement? 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not? 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? PRESENT: Mr.Rahul Sharma, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. Harish Rathee, Sr.DAG, Haryana, for the State. **** RANJIT SINGH, J. The petitioner, who was appointed as Junior Mistress (Cutting and Tailoring) and had joined the service on 7.8.2007, has challenged her termination order dated 10.9.2009. The services of the petitioner have been terminated primarily on the ground that she had submitted a forged and false certificate/attestation while seeking the appointment. Counsel for the petitioner would impugn this termination on various grounds. He would first point out that the State itself had Civil Writ Petition No.16322 of 2009 : 2 : justified the appointment of the petitioner and had refuted the allegation of teaching experience certificate being false when her appointment was challenged in CWP No.3608 of 2008 (Santosh Moun Vs. State of Haryana & others). This writ petition was got dismissed as withdrawn when the State of Haryana had filed a written statement saying that the allegations made by Santosh Moun in his writ petition against the petitioner were incorrect. Subsequently, Bhupinder Singh and Raj Kumar made a complaint against the petitioner that she had submitted fake certificate. Petitioner says that they have a personal grudge and feud against her and want their relative to be appointed and so had made this complaint. Thereafter, show cause notice was issued to the petitioner asking her to explain with regard to allegations pertaining to the certificate submitted by her being wrongly attested and experience certificate as submitted to be fake. The petitioner filed a reply stating that this certificate was attested by C.P.Battay and she also refuted the allegation of experience certificate being false. As per the petitioner, this certificate was issued by a recognised institution. It is averred that the respondents chose to get the matter enquired and accordingly Shri M.S.Sangwan, Principal, ITI Karnal has submitted his enquiry report. He has found the allegations against the petitioner to be false. The Enquiry Officer has also observed that no finding can be given about the signatures of C.P. Battay and this, as per the Enquiry Officer, should be examined by handwriting expert. The petitioner in this background would say that she was shocked to receive the termination order on 10.9.2009 and, thus, has filed this writ petition. Civil Writ Petition No.16322 of 2009 : 3 : This is a second attempt made by the petitioner. The petitioner had earlier filed CWP No.14413 of 2009, which was disposed of giving liberty to the petitioner to make a representation with further direction that the same be considered and decided in accordance with law expeditiously preferably within a period of one month. The representation filed by the petitioner has accordingly been decided on 20.10.2009, which is now impugned through the present writ petition Counsel for the petitioner has made manifold submissions. He would say that the enquiry report is in favour of the petitioner and speaking order would not be a substitute for the same. He would also contend that the respondents are estopped from changing their stand and, thus, they could not have validly passed the order terminating the services of the petitioner. The perusal of the impugned order would show that earlier stand taken by the respondents was stated to be in a good faith and the certificate submitted by the petitioner was taken to be a genuine one. When subsequent complaints were again received regarding fake attestation of the experience certificate, the matter was enquired into and it was found that petitioner had forged the attestation on the certificate produced by her from 1.9.2005 to 30.4.2007. It is noticed that the attesting authority, i.e., Shri C.P.Battay, Vice Principal of Vocational Education Institute, Sacha Sauda has categorically denied having attested the experience certificate (Annexure R-2) while appearing before the enquiry. It is, thus, stated that initiation of criminal proceedings for forgery and cheating against the petitioner is under consideration. After holding Civil Writ Petition No.16322 of 2009 : 4 : due enquiry, the services of the petitioner have, thus, been terminated. The petitioner is alleged to have obtained appointment by fraud. It is well settled that fraud and justice never dwell together and fraud and deceit defend or excuse no man. Any thing based on fraud is to be treated as nullity. Fraud avoids all judicial acts, ecclesiastical and temporal. This fraud is enough to vitiate appointment. The counsel for the petitioner made strenuous efforts to say that final decision on the attestation being fake could only be taken after getting the matter examined from the handwriting expert and in this regard heavily relied upon the enquiry report. Once the person, who is alleged to have attested the certificate has come forward to say that he did not sign it, there will hardly be a need to get the document examined by expert. Moreover, such disputed question of fact appropriately cannot be gone into in exercise of writ jurisdiction on the basis of the pleadings as are made in the writ petition. The respondents have sufficient material to pass the impugned order, which is the statement of the person, who had allegedly attested this certificate to say that the attestation was fake. Enquiry has been held in the case. Petitioner had duly participated in the enquiry. Having regard to the totality of the facts and circumstances, I am not inclined to interfere in exercise of writ jurisdiction. The writ petition is, therefore, dismissed. October 27, 2009 ( RANJIT SINGH ) ramesh JUDGE