HC quashes IAF official’s dismissal for bigamy, cites ‘non-application of mind’

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed an order dismissing an Indian Air Force official from service for marrying twice without prior permission from the authority concerned. The Bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Sudeepti Sharma found that the dismissal order suffered from significant statutory breaches, arbitrariness in the decision-making process and “gross non-application of mind”.

The petitioner, a Muslim from West Bengal, joined the Indian Air Force (IAF) on December 27, 2005, and married a woman in July 2009, with whom he has a daughter. He later married another woman in December 2012 without obtaining the requisite permission from the Air Force authorities. Following an inquiry, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Air Command found the petitioner blameworthy for entering into a “plural marriage”, resulting in his dismissal from the service. His appeal to the Armed Forces Tribunal was dismissed, prompting the present writ petition before the high court.

The Bench asserted the petitioner’s marriages complied with the permissible plural marriage provisions under the Islamic personal law. But the defence personnel were still required to obtain permission for plural marriages.

The Bench, at the same time, asserted the court’s role was to advance “substantial justice. Even if the petitioner did not initially secure permission for the second marriage, the Air Force authorities should have considered the mitigating circumstances, including the apparent consent of his first wife”. It said, “It appears that the first spouse of the present petitioner consented to the latter contracting a second marriage… In sequel, thereby, the consent by the former spouse of the petitioner to re-marry was required to be assigned some deference.”

Referring to the harshness of depriving the petitioner of his livelihood, the Bench observed the action could jeopardise his and his family’s right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. “The deprivation of any source of livelihood to the petitioner and his family members would jeopardise Article 21,” the court observed.

The Bench also made it clear that the petitioner, otherwise, had an unblemished service record and was serving as a patriotic soldier. “The evident lack of application of mind by the respondent concerned does make the impugned order suffer from the vice of gross arbitrariness,” the court asserted, while noting that the authorities failed to consider granting ex-post sanction for the petitioner’s plural marriage despite the extenuating factors.

Before parting with the case, the Bench quashed the AFT’s order and directed the respondents to re-evaluate the petitioner’s case within three months, giving due consideration to the possibility of retroactive permission for his plural marriage. “The writ petition is allowed. The impugned order is quashed and set aside, with a direction to the respondent to exercise the empowerment vested in it to grant ex-post facto sanction for the petitioner’s purported misdemeanour.”