Legal Reference Library

The fact that the witness may be related to the deceased by marriage, cannot be sufficient reason to classify him as a related and interested witness to reject his testimony, the Supreme Court has observed while dismissing the appeals in a murder case (Chandrasekar vs State). The wife of the deceased and her relatives were prime witnesses in this case and they had deposed seeing the murderous assault on the deceased by the accused. The trial court had convicted the accused and sentenced them to life imprisonment and the high court had upheld the verdict. “It may only call for greater scrutiny and caution in consideration of the evidence,” the court observed, while rejecting the contention that these witnesses were interested witnessed and their testimony be rejected. With regard to deposition by the wife, the bench observed: “Being the wife of the deceased, we find no reason why she would not be speaking the truth with regard to the real assailants instead of shielding them by fa...

In a contractual master-servant relationship, no employee can assert a right to withdraw his resignation, especially after it had been accepted by the competent authority, on any ground, much less the ground of having tendered the resignation in frustration and under depression, the Madras High Court has ruled. A Division Bench of the High Court gave the ruling while dismissing a writ petition filed by a lower court employee who claimed to have resigned from the post of office assistant because he was made to perform domestic chores such as cleaning toilets even on holidays at the residence of a Chief Judicial Magistrate. Writing the judgment, Justice M. Venugopal said: “The term ‘resignation’ means the act of giving up or relinquishing office. A resignation must be unconditional and one with the intent to operate as such... In law, an employee has no locus poenitentiae (right to withdraw) to withdraw an offer of resignation after it was accepted. He also pointed out that the res...

Justice Manmohan Singh of the Delhi High Court has recently passed a verdict involving Section 12(5) of the amended Arbitration & Conciliation Act of 1996. Hearing a dispute between Assignia-VIL JV and the Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd, the High Court observed that S.12(5) “mandates” that if the arbitrator and the parties involved enjoy any of the relationships mentioned in the Seventh Schedule of the Act, then that arbitrator cannot be appointed. One of these relationships is that of employer-employee, which was the case here. Of course, the provisions of the amended Act only apply to arbitrations that have commenced on or after October 23, 2015. And Section 21 of the Act further clarifies that, “Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, the arbitral proceedings, in respect of a particular dispute commence on the date on which a request for that dispute to be referred to arbitration is received by the respondent.”