Tripura HC summons forest official to appear in person for violating court direction

Agartala: The High Court of Tripura on Wednesday summoned the Head of Forest Force (HoFF), holding the charge of Principal Secretary, Department of Science & Technology Dr K S Shetty to appear before the court on Friday for explaining the non-compliance with its direction in regard to holding up the pension benefit an employee.

Justice Arindam Lodh has summoned him to physically appear in court on Wednesday for not releasing the pension of Principal Scientific Officer Nataraj Dutta as directed by the court earlier.

However, Dr Shetty evaded the appearance in court and submitted an affidavit stating that the pension benefits to Dutta were released as per the revised rule after getting the summons.

Dr Shetty took the plea of his non-appearance stating that he has been busy with upcoming events of the G20 meeting scheduled to be held here on April 3-5 next, which made the court dissatisfied and uttered that this appeared to be an attempt to disregard the court by a top bureaucrat and amount to be contempt of court.

The judge issued a fresh summon directing him to appear in person on Friday at 10.30 am before the court. The petitioner had gone on retirement in October 2019 but the department held up his pension benefits on the ground that he had two pending departmental cases against him.

One of the cases related to his purported comment against BJP MP and Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Pratima Bhoumik but since there was no evidence or witness, he had got a clean chit.

Another case was related to the filing of an unauthorized affidavit in court but this also proved to be false as Dutta had filed the affidavit upon orders from the then Secretary of the department, which was prepared and approved by the law department.

Dutta said, “Even though there is a rule that in the event of a pending case against a retiring employee 90% of pension must be granted. I was not given even a single coin. Left with no other alternative I approached the high court which passed an order directing the department to clear my pension but this was not done. When the court summoned the Principal Secretary, an unjustified amount was released.”