Chandigarh, Sept. 11 -- The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has quashed the dismissal of four UT police personnel facing CBI corruption cases, observing that the seriousness of theallegations or registration of a criminal case alone cannot be a reason to remove a government employee without holding a departmental inquiry. The tribunal said the authorities had failed to produce sufficient material to show that holding departmental inquiries against the personnel was not reasonably practicable. It observed that even the arrest of an employee in a criminal case does not automatically do away with the requirement of a departmental inquiry. The four personnel had been dismissed from service by invoking Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution, which permits dismissal without a departmental inquiry in exceptional circumstances where conducting such an inquiry is not reasonably practicable. One of the petitioners, assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Akhtar Hussain, had joined UT police as a constable in 1988 and waspromoted as sub-inspector in 2021. In October 2023, he was booked by the CBI for allegedly demanding and accepting a Rs.5 lakh bribe from one Ram Mehar Sharma in lieu of not taking coercive action against his brother in a GST fraud case. CAT said a mere possibility or general apprehension that a police officer could influence witnesses or tamper withevidence was not sufficient to invoke the exceptionalprovision. The authority must have relevant and objective material to support such a conclusion. In the present case, the tribunal found no specific and contemporaneous material showing that any witness had been threatened or intimidated, had refused to participate in departmental proceedings, or that any other concrete circumstance had made an inquiry impracticable. The tribunal also rejected the respondents' reliance on the subsequent chargesheet and framing of charges in the CBI case, observing that the legality of the decision to dispense with the inquiry had to be assessed on the basis of the circumstances and material available when the dismissal order was passed. Later developments could not retrospectively cure an otherwise invalid exercise of the exceptional power....