DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu Dismissal Quashed by HC: Charge-Sheet Sent to Wrong Address, Enquiry Continues
HC quashed DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu’s dismissal over the Lawrence Bishnoi interview case — but found his charge-sheet was sent to a stale address, and the enquiry against eight other officers before Justice Rajiv Narain Raina is still active.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, September 3
The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s order reinstating DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu — the officer dismissed last year over the Lawrence Bishnoi jailhouse-interview scandal — is not a straightforward reinstatement. Instead, the 63-page order tells a more layered story: the court did not clear Sandhu of the underlying allegation, it found that the Punjab government engineered his exit by dispensing with a proper enquiry, using a charge-sheet it had reason to know would never reach him.
Justice Namit Kumar, allowing DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu’s writ petition on September 1, ruled that the state’s invocation of Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution — the exceptional provision that lets the government dismiss a civil servant without holding a departmental enquiry — did not meet the constitutional threshold. The court was direct about why:
“Despite being in possession of his correct and known address, the charge-sheet dated 25.10.2024 was sent to the petitioner’s old address at Chandigarh, from where he had already been transferred. In such circumstances, the mere fact that the charge-sheet could not be served at the said address could not, by itself, furnish any basis for recording a conclusion that the petitioner had deliberately evaded service or had refused to participate in the disciplinary proceedings.”
‘Incomplete’ charge-sheet to DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu
DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu’s own account, recorded in the order, is that the department did not even leave a complete charge-sheet at that wrong address — only “the covering letter of the charge-sheet, without the complete articles of charge/s,” pasted outside a government house in Sector 39 that had been allotted to him during an earlier posting, while his actual charge-sheet went unserved at his listed permanent address in Jalandhar. He says he learned the government had recommended his dismissal not from any notice, but from a report in a newspaper.
A timeline that undercuts the “non-cooperation” story
What makes the sequence harder to explain away is what the court itself was doing at the same time. The interview scandal was already under judicial supervision through a separate PIL.
On December 18, 2024 — barely two weeks before Sandhu was dismissed — the High Court recorded that the state had told it an Inquiry Officer would be reconsidered, and the court itself suggested a name: “The Government shall consider appointing Justice Rajiv Narain Raina, Former Judge of this Court as the Inquiry Officer.” The state was told to move “expeditiously.”
Instead, on January 2, 2025, the government dismissed DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu outright under Article 311(2)(b) — bypassing the very enquiry process the High Court had just set in motion — citing his “non-cooperative attitude.” The High Court’s own reasoning suggests it did not buy that framing:
“If the decision to dismiss the petitioner had already been taken before the impugned order came to be passed, the subsequent invocation of Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution cannot be permitted to operate as a mere justification for dispensing with the departmental enquiry.”
The court concluded: “This Court has no hesitation in holding that the satisfaction recorded by the competent authority for dispensing with the departmental enquiry does not meet the constitutional standard prescribed under Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution. The impugned order dated 02.01.2025… is accordingly liable to be set aside.”
Reinstated — but the enquiry, and the list of names, keeps growing
The operative order is unambiguous that this is a process win, not an acquittal: “the setting aside of the impugned order dated 02.01.2025 and direction for reinstatement shall be without prejudice to the right of the respondents to take recourse in accordance with law, by continuing with the departmental enquiry, which was pending against petitioner and other officers/officials before the Enquiry Officer, namely, Justice Rajiv Narain Raina, former Judge of this Court.”
That enquiry is not a two-line formality. A letter from the DGP Punjab’s office dated September 23, 2025 summoned nine officers and officials to appear before Justice Raina on September 28, 2025, over the Bishnoi interview case: DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu himself; Amandeep Singh Brar (then ADCP/Investigation, Ludhiana); Ajinder Singh (then SP/Headquarters, SAS Nagar); Samar Vaneet (then DSP/PBI/EOW, SAS Nagar, under suspension); and five suspended subordinate ranks from AGTF and CIA Kharar, down to a sub-inspector and a head constable who was the night duty officer at CIA Kharar the night the interview was recorded.
In other words, while DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu was the one who lost his job, he was never the only name on the list — and the enquiry against the others, including officers senior to him, is still running in parallel.
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