Petty offenders may get govt jobs: HC

A person convicted for minor offences should not be disqualified for government jobs, the Delhi high court said on Wednesday and asked the government to frame rules in this regard.

"It is high time the executive brings into place a policy where summary/ordinary conviction should not be treated as a conviction for entry or retention in government service," a bench comprising Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mool Chand Garg said.

The court passed the order while dismissing the stand of Delhi government which had refused to give employment to a youth, accused of a minor offence, as a sub-inspector in Delhi police.

"The need of the hour is to understand that criminals are not born and are not irredeemable brutes. Crime may be a disease but not the criminals who are a kind of psychic patients and to understand that anti-social maladies are mostly the result of social imbalances," the court said while asking the government to take a sympathetic approach towards person accused of minor offences.

"While denying employment with respect to the offence committed by a person, it may be a serious violation of the constitutional right of a citizen to be fairly treated in the matter of public employment if trivial offences committed by the citizen would justify the state shutting its eyes and denying employment," the court said.

Asking the Delhi government to come up with proper guidelines for employment, the court said that in the absence of proper policies from the executive, it has no choice but to step in to protect the interest of citizens.

"Till then, it would be the duty of the court to interpret the law by harmonizing human sufferings and human wants, delinquencies and criminal tendencies. . . the rich and the poor, the needy and the well-off, the hungry and the well-fed, the educated and the uneducated," the court said.

"Life is too precious to be staked over petty incidents and the cruel result of conviction for petty offences being the end of the career, the future and the present, of young and inexperienced persons cannot blast their life and their dreams," it said.

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