Employment obtained through false claims is illegal even if the job did not have a direct co-relation to the fraud committed,the Supreme Court has ruled. In other words,if a person joined any training institute by submitting inflated marks at the qualifying exams,he or she can be dismissed even if the person successfully completes the training and goes on to obtain a job. "If a particular act is fraudulent,any consequential order to such fraudulent act or conduct is non est (non-existent) and void ab initio (illegal from the very beginning) and,therefore,we cannot find any fault with the action of the appellant in dismissing the service of the contesting respondents," the apex court said. A bench of justices Mukundakam Sharma and A R Dave passed the ruling while quashing a Calcutta High Court order which had ruled that if the alleged fraud had no direct bearing to the employment it cannot be termed as illegal. Mritunjoy Das and another teacher were sacked by West Bengal government for having completed their teachers training course from an institute where they had produced inflated marks to secure the admission. According to the State the minimum marks for obtaining admission in the institute was 600 but the duo,who got 430 and 425 marks at the qualifying stage,inflated the figures to join the institute. When the fraud was detected after they obtained the job,they were sacked by the government. But the Calcutta High Court quashed their dismissal,following which the state appealed in the apex court. The accused teachers took the plea that they completed the training course successfully and got the appointment after duly qualifying in the test and,therefore,the allegation,which is prior to the said date,could not and should not have been given a weightage so as to dis-entitle them from the job. The apex court rejected their plea and agreed with the government that a person of such a conduct should not be allowed to continue as a teacher in a primary school as the students whom they intend to teach are at a "formative stage." "On going through the records placed before us,what we find is that the contesting respondents herein inflated their marks in order to obtain admission in the primary teachers' training institute. Had the marks not been inflated in the aforesaid manner,the contesting respondents would not have got the admission in that particular institute as it is disclosed from the records. "Therefore,the admission sought for was through an illegal means which is to be deprecated. The conduct of the contesting respondents being such,we cannot find fault with the course of action taken by the appellant herein," the apex court said.
