Criminal case over salary row illegal shortcut, says Patna High Court

Patna: The Patna high court has ruled that a criminal case filed by a showroom staff member against his employer over salary payment is an illegal “shortcut” method for settling labour disputes and amounts to abuse of provisions of criminal law.A single bench of Justice Ansul, while allowing a criminal miscellaneous petition filed by Dinesh Kumar Rai, a vehicle showroom owner in Vaishali district, delivered the judgement on April 2. A copy of the verdict came into the public domain through the high court website on Thursday.In 2015, a criminal complaint was filed against Dinesh by one of his staff members, Ravi Shankar Kumar, alleging non-payment of salaries, including overtime payments amounting to more than Rs 8.95 lakh, by the accused showroom owner.However, at the same time, Ravi Shankar Kumar’s case regarding the said salary dispute was already pending before the state’s labour enforcement authority and remained unattended.On Feb 20, 2017, a trial court in Vaishali at Hajipur issued summons against Dinesh after registering a prosecution case against him on the accusation of criminal breach of trust.While quashing the said order of the trial court, Justice Ansul held, “Criminal complaint of such nature carry contents of civil/labour disputes arising out of contractual matters to which the complainant tried to give ‘criminal colour’ for settling his salary disputes against his employer which cannot be legally allowed to sustain.”