How Did Delhi Police Dismiss Constable Ankit Kasana Overnight Without A Hearing?

On the night of 19 April 2023, according to the complaint that became FIR No. 228/2023 at Sagarpur police station in South-West Delhi, a man named Rajnish was at his flat watching an IPL match with his girlfriend when four persons arrived claiming to be from the “Cyber Police Station.” They allegedly slapped and threatened him, took mobile phones, forced a friend to transfer one lakh rupees into his account, removed ten lakh rupees and a gold chain from a cupboard, obtained debit cards and PINs, and made him write a note about Bitcoin mining before leaving in a small white car.

The FIR invoked Sections 394 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code, voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery, with common intention. Four of the five accused were soon identified as Delhi Police constables. One of them was Ankit Kasana, who had joined the force as Constable (Executive) on 26 February 2020 and was posted at Parliament Street police station.

Ankit Kasana has maintained that his name did not appear in the original FIR and that he was falsely implicated. The police version records his arrest on 20 April 2023 (he has said 21 April) and suspension from the same date. A preliminary enquiry conducted by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, without Ankit Kasana’s participation, and concluded that he was involved. According to the disciplinary material later relied upon, approximately ₹2.30 lakh to ₹2.70 lakh of the alleged looted money was recovered “on his instance,” and the car used in the incident, registered in his mother’s name, was also recovered. These recoveries were treated as decisive.

On 24 May 2023 Kasana was released on bail. The very next day, 25 May 2023, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Dr. Hemant Tiwari issued an order dismissing him from service with immediate effect under Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution. No departmental enquiry was held. The order recited the gravity of the offence, the recovery of money and vehicle, the preliminary enquiry findings, and the assertion that continuing him in service was undesirable. It declared that a regular departmental proceeding was not reasonably practicable.

An appeal to the Additional Commissioner of Police was rejected on 11 January 2024. In the interim, on 10 July 2023 the complainant and Ankit Kasana signed a settlement in which the complainant stated that Ankit Kasana had not been identified in the test identification parade and that the FIR arose from misunderstanding and anger. On 10 August 2023 the Delhi High Court quashed the FIR in Crl. M.C. 5651/2023. Ankit Kasana informed his department and sought reinstatement; the request was refused.

He approached the Central Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi, in O.A. No. 264/2024. The matter was reserved on 10 September 2024 and pronounced on 8 October 2024 by a Bench comprising Hon’ble Mr. R.N. Singh, Member (Judicial) and Hon’ble Mr. Rajinder Kashyap, Member (Administrative). The Tribunal set aside both the dismissal order of 25 May 2023 and the appellate rejection of 11 January 2024, directed reinstatement with consequential benefits in accordance with the relevant rules within eight weeks, and left the respondents free to initiate proper disciplinary proceedings if they so chose. No costs were awarded.

The constitutional hinge of the entire dispute is Article 311(2). A civil servant cannot be dismissed, removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which he has been informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard. Clause (b) of the proviso carves out a narrow exception: the inquiry may be dispensed with if the authority is satisfied, for reasons to be recorded in writing, that it is not reasonably practicable to hold such inquiry.

The Supreme Court in Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel explained that the exception is meant for situations of genuine impossibility, threats to witnesses, a climate of intimidation, or other practical barriers that render a fair hearing unworkable. It is not a device for short-circuiting due process merely because the allegation is serious or the employer is confident of guilt.

Delhi Police’s own circular of 11 September 2007, issued after earlier adverse orders, reiterates that Article 311(2)(b) may be invoked only when the officer is personally satisfied, on the basis of material on record, that inquiry is impossible because of threats, intimidation and the like. The circular itself records that most such dismissals had previously been struck down because they rested on assumptions and conjectures.

Yet in Ankit Kasana’s case the dismissal order treated the FIR allegations and the preliminary enquiry conclusions as already proven. The Tribunal observed that this was circular reasoning: the very purpose of a departmental inquiry is to test whether those allegations are true. The police had managed to conduct a preliminary enquiry and a criminal investigation was under way; if those processes were feasible, the claim that a formal departmental inquiry was “not reasonably practicable” collapsed.

The Tribunal relied on the principle articulated in Tarsem Singh that where a preliminary enquiry can be held, a full inquiry can ordinarily be held as well. No attempt was ever made to commence a departmental inquiry and then abandon it because of demonstrated obstacles. The assertion that witnesses would be too frightened to depose against a policeman was unsupported by any material showing that Kasana had threatened anyone. A junior constable in custody has limited capacity to intimidate; many potential witnesses were fellow police officers. The Tribunal characterised the reasoning as resting on “suspicion and surmises.”

Perhaps the most pointed observation was that the graver the charge, the greater the need to afford the employee an opportunity to defend himself. Seriousness of the allegation cannot itself justify skipping the hearing; the more serious the possible consequence, the more important it is that the process be fair. The appellate order fared no better. It did not engage with Ankit  Kasana’s specific arguments, treated the subsequent settlement as an admission of guilt (an assumption the Tribunal rejected), and mechanically upheld the dismissal.

The Tribunal placed the case in a longer line of Delhi High Court and CAT decisions—Dushyant Kumar, Manjeet, Jagmal Singh, Sant Ram, Om Prakash, in which Delhi Police had repeatedly been told that mechanical invocation of Article 311(2)(b) without evidence of real practical impossibility would not stand. In some of those matters the department had itself accepted the rulings and reinstated the officers. In Om Prakash the High Court had warned that costs could be imposed and recovered from the officer who passed unjustified orders. The Tribunal described the present case as “a case of absolute misuse of power” and the use of Article 311(2)(b) as a “short cut.”

What, then, does the judgment actually decide? It does not declare Kasana innocent of the robbery. The recoveries of money and the vehicle were never tested in a contested departmental hearing. The Tribunal left the door open for the department to hold a proper inquiry and, if the charges are proved, to dismiss him again. It decides only that the process followed was unlawful. The FIR having already been quashed, the criminal case no longer exists, but departmental misconduct can still be examined on its own evidence.

The human and institutional costs of the shortcut remain. Ankit Kasana spent more than a year out of service after a dismissal that a specialised tribunal later found to have been passed without jurisdiction under the constitutional exception. He was a constable of roughly three years’ service; the sudden loss of livelihood, the stigma of a dismissal order placed on his service record, and the necessity of litigating for reinstatement are not abstract inconveniences.

On the other side, the public interest in a police force free of officers who may have committed robbery while impersonating cyber police is real and urgent. The tension between those two interests is precisely why the Constitution requires a hearing unless genuine impossibility is demonstrated and recorded. Treating the exception as a routine administrative convenience erodes both the individual right and the institutional credibility the force claims to protect.

The pattern is not isolated. The same tribunal and the Delhi High Court have had to reiterate the same principles across multiple constables and multiple years. Each time the department returns to the same language, heinous crime, public trust, witnesses will not come forward, inquiry will take years without first attempting the inquiry or producing evidence of intimidation. How many times must a court point out that “we are sure he did it” is not a reason for dispensing with the very procedure designed to determine whether he did it? How many times must a circular acknowledging past failures be ignored before the failure itself becomes the culture?

The recovery figures themselves invite scrutiny. Whether the sum was ₹2.30 lakh or ₹2.70 lakh, the money and the car were recovered during investigation and cited as proof of involvement. In a regular departmental inquiry those recoveries would have been open to cross-examination, explanation of the circumstances under which statements were made, and consideration of the later settlement and High Court quashing. None of that testing occurred.

The preliminary enquiry, being one-sided, could not substitute for it. The claim that Ankit Kasana’s presence in jail made an inquiry impossible is equally thin: suspended officers under custody routinely face departmental proceedings through written statements, authorised representatives, or once released on bail. He was released on 24 May; the dismissal followed on 25 May. The prediction that he had “no scope of release on bail” was simply wrong.

The appointing-authority argument, that only the Commissioner could dismiss him under the Delhi Police (Punishment & Appeal) Rules, 1980, and that an Additional DCP lacked competence was raised but left undecided because the Article 311 ground was sufficient. The question of competence therefore remains an open institutional vulnerability: if lower officers continue to pass major penalties without clear authority, every such order carries a latent defect.

Reinstatement with consequential benefits does not automatically mean full back wages for the entire period; the rules will determine the precise financial consequences, and the Tribunal noted that he remained under suspension at the time of the impugned orders. The practical effect is that an officer who was removed without a hearing must now either face a fresh, properly conducted inquiry or return to duty under the cloud of unresolved allegations. Either outcome is preferable to a dismissal that treated constitutional safeguards as optional.

The larger concern is institutional memory. When courts repeatedly describe the same practice as misuse of power, and when departmental circulars themselves admit that earlier invocations rested on conjecture, the continued resort to the same shortcut suggests that the cost of being corrected is still lower than the perceived administrative convenience of avoiding a hearing. Public trust in the police is not strengthened by the appearance that the force can discard its own members without the process it is expected to uphold for citizens. Nor is it strengthened when a serious allegation of robbery by policemen is never tested in the forum specifically designed to determine departmental culpability.

The Ankit Kasana case is therefore not merely the story of one constable’s dismissal and reinstatement. It is a window into a recurring choice: whether to treat Article 311(2)(b) as a narrow emergency valve or as a standing exemption from the inconvenience of natural justice. The Tribunal chose the former reading and enforced it. The unanswered question is whether the department will internalise that reading or simply wait for the next FIR, the next recovery, and the next order that declares a hearing “not reasonably practicable” without ever having tried to hold one.

The facts are on the record: enlistment on 26 February 2020; FIR 228/2023 under Sections 394/34 IPC; arrest and suspension in April 2023; bail on 24 May 2023; dismissal on 25 May 2023 under Article 311(2)(b); settlement on 10 July 2023; High Court quashing on 10 August 2023; appeal rejection on 11 January 2024; CAT order on 8 October 2024 setting aside the dismissal and directing reinstatement with liberty for fresh proceedings. Every one of those dates and findings was available to the authorities when they chose the shortcut. The choice, and the judicial response to it, remain a measure of how seriously the constitutional text is taken when the employee is one of their own.