The Punjab and Haryana High Court has fined the Punjab government ₹1 lakh for violating rules by taking disciplinary action against a retired employee.

The court criticized the state for issuing a charge-sheet after the employee had already retired, even though the incident in question was more than four years old. According to service rules, such action is not allowed once an employee retires if the incident happened over four years before the charge-sheet was issued.

Chief Justice Sheel Nagu said, “The court’s valuable time has been wasted on a case that could have been avoided. The petitioner was forced to approach the court due to the state’s blatant violation of the law.”

He also slammed the state government for aggressively opposing the case by submitting a 56-page affidavit instead of accepting their mistake, calling it a misuse of the judicial process.

The court ultimately quashed the charge-sheet and imposed the ₹1 lakh cost on the state for its unlawful actions.