Asking employee to immediately join place of posting is not criminal intimidation: Calcutta High Court

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday held that an employer cannot be booked for criminal intimidation or criminal conspiracy merely because he asked an employee to join his place of posting immediately [Debarati Banerjee vs State of West Bengal]..Justice Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee made the observation while quashing a criminal case lodged against the Human Resources (HR) manager of IDBI Bank. The Court observed that if a bank decides to transfer its employee under its transfer policy, it would not be criminal intimidation under Section 506 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) since it does not amount to a threat to cause any “injury” to the transferee's reputation or property"Similarly by asking an employee to join in his place of posting immediately, cannot come within the mischief of criminal intimation or criminal conspiracy (sic)," the Court added..The HR manager had been accused by an assistant manager (complainant) at the bank of conspiring with other officers to assassinate his character and to transfer him from the Birbhum district of West Bengal to Tripura.The HR manager and others were booked on charges of criminal conspiracy (Section 120B) and criminal intimidation (Section 506) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)..After a summons was issued in the case by a magistrate, the HR manager approached the High Court to quash the charges. He informed the High Court that the complainant had earlier been accused of sexually harassing a female officer at the bank. On her complaint to the higher-ups of the bank, a decision was taken by the higher authorities on an 'administrative basis' to transfer the complainant to Tripura, the Court was told.The HR manager also noted that officers with more than five years of experience in a station were normally transferred under the bank's transfer policy and that the complainant had completed six years in Birbhum.The manager added that he was not on the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) panel and was not involved in the decision to transfer the complainant..The bench ultimately quashed the criminal charges, terming it an abuse of the court process that was meant to wreak vengeance.The Court also criticised the magistrate who entertained the criminal complaint. The High Court found that the order of the magistrate did not record that a prima facie case had been made out against the manager and that summons had been issued without verifying the complaint."It is settled law that the order of cognizance which forms the very basis of initiation of proceeding cannot be made in a mechanical way but it requires great exercise of judicial mind. Court must not act as a delivery system in the post office i.e. only to give approval on a complaint without application of proper judicial mind and without considering as to whether complaint itself constitutes any offence against any particular accused or not," the bench observed.The magistrate’s role is not like a silent spectator at the time of recording of preliminary deposition before issuance of process in a criminal case, the bench underscored. "The Magistrate is duty bound to carefully scrutinize the deposition to find out the truthfulness of the allegation and then to examine if any offence is prima facie committed by the accused," the bench added..Advocates Ayan Bhattacharya, Arindam Dutta, Kausik De, Mohini Majumder and Raghav Munshi appeared for the HR manager.Advocates Prosenjit Mukherjee, Nirmalya Kumar Das and Poulami Dutta represented the complainant..[Read Judgment]