Nazir Ahmad was charged with misconduct — allegedly in connivance with two employees — relating to a fertilizer sample (RICO Crops Supplement Zinc Sulphate). The sample was analyzed without associating him, and then re-analyzed after 120 days, in violation of the 60-day SOP limit for re-analysis. On this material he was compulsorily retired on 14.10.2020; the Punjab Service Tribunal, on 08.03.2023 in Appeal No.5039/2020, reduced the penalty to forfeiture of two years' service.
In C.P.2732/2023, the Supreme Court — Mr. Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi authoring, with Mrs. Justice Ayesha A. Malik — converted the petition into an appeal and allowed it on 16.09.2026 in a judgment approved for reporting. The Tribunal's judgment and the departmental orders were set aside entirely: the inquiry findings were held perverse, the alleged misconduct was never proved, and the petitioner was exonerated of all charges — entitled to all back benefits of pay and allowances from 01.08.2017, the date of his compulsory retirement.
'Perverse' is the strongest word an appellate court has for fact-findings: it means no reasonable person could have reached them on the evidence. An analysis conducted behind the officer's back, and a re-analysis after double the SOP's time limit, could not prove anything against him — yet a career was ended on exactly that.
The case restores more than one man's benefits; it polices inquiry culture. Departmental proceedings must prove, not presume — and where they don't, the Supreme Court will not merely reduce the punishment, it will erase it. Be-gunah ko saza dena khud sab se bara misconduct hai, and this judgment says so with back pay.