Gurugram: Rana, a police dog, died in a government kennel in Haryana’s State Crime Branch on the night of 7-8 May 2007 after nobody fed him for three days.
Nineteen years on, the legal case triggered by his death has finally closed. On 6 July, the Punjab and Haryana High Court upheld the punishment imposed on constable Jagbir Singh, who then headed the Dog Squad, dismissing an appeal by his legal heirs after his death.
Jagbir Singh, who challenged the punishment of four annual increments being stopped permanently, did not live to see the case end.
Justices Harsimran Singh Sethi and Amarinder Singh Grewal, hearing the Letters Patent Appeal (LPA), found no reason to interfere with a 2013 single-bench order that had already rejected Jagbir Singh’s challenge to the same punishment.
An LPA is an appeal where a litigant challenges a decision made by a single judge of a high court to a larger bench of the same high court.
The order has been uploaded to the High Court website now.
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Who was looking after the dog?
The case arose when Rana’s regular handler went on sanctioned leave in January 2007, and Jagbir Singh put another constable, Jagmal Singh, in charge of the dog for that period.
A 25 February 2007 circular from the Superintendent of Police of the State Crime Branch required fortnightly medical check-ups for dogs and regular weight reports sent up the chain. Nobody sent them. Three months later, Rana was dead.
A post-mortem by Dr N.K. Mahani, a veterinary surgeon at Uchha Samana in Karnal, found that the dog had gone unfed for three days before he died.
Both constables were then charge-sheeted, and an inquiry found that the charges proved true against both. Their punishment was identical: four increments were stopped permanently.
Over the years, Jagbir Singh fought the order through every departmental forum available to him—and lost each time.
But his co-accused’s case was different. His punishment was reduced to the temporary stoppage of two increments, after the Director General of Police took the view that Rana’s death could not be pinned squarely on how he was handled or fed, and that Jagmal Singh, who was only following an order to look after the dog, deserved a second chance.
But Jagbir Singh’s punishment remained the same.
‘He had the choice, Jagmal Singh didn’t’
That difference became the heart of Jagbir Singh’s case when he first went to the high court in 2013. His counsel, Dr Suresh Kumar Redhu, argued that the two different punishments in the same case were rank discrimination.
Justice Rajiv Narain Raina, hearing the writ petition, did not agree. He wrote in his order that dogs are sensitive animals, and a Dog Squad head is expected to know not just his dogs but the temperament of every handler under him.
Jagbir Singh had choices in picking a substitute caregiver. Jagmal Singh had none — he simply did as he was told. That difference in responsibility, the judge held, was enough to justify different punishments. The petition was dismissed.
Thirteen years later, the same result
Jagbir Singh’s family carried the fight forward through the LPA filed after his death.
Dr Redhu argued three points before the Division Bench in July this year: that the punishment was too harsh for the charges proved, that the 2007 enquiry findings were built on guesswork rather than evidence, and that the gap between Jagbir Singh’s punishment and Jagmal Singh’s amounted to discrimination.
But the bench was not moved.
On the question of proportionality, the judges leaned on a 2023 Supreme Court ruling, Union of India vs Const. Sunil Kumar, which set a high bar for courts to step in—a punishment has to be “shockingly disproportionate”, not merely harsh, before a court will touch it.
On evidence, the bench pointed to settled law going back decades: courts don’t reweigh evidence from a departmental inquiry the way an appellate court would in a trial.
Other cases were cited to make the point that departmental proceedings only need to meet a preponderance of probability, nowhere close to the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In simple terms, it means that while a criminal court can only punish someone if the evidence proves guilt with near-total certainty, a departmental inquiry can penalise an employee if the evidence merely shows it’s more likely than not that they committed a wrongdoing.
On the question of discrimination, the judges returned to where Justice Raina had landed 13 years earlier: the two constables were never on an equal footing to begin with. One carried the responsibility of command; the other followed instructions.
The bench rejected the discrimination plea, saying different roles can justify different punishments.
The appeal was dismissed. And the four lost increments imposed in 2007 stood confirmed.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)