' This judgment shall dispose of four petitions titled "Maqbool Ahmad V. Millat Tractors Limited, Abdul Ghafoor v. Millat Tractors Limited, Riaz Shahid v. Millat Tractors Limited and Muhammad Iqbal v. Millat Tractors Limited" because all the petitions involve common question of law and facts. The charge-sheets against all the petitioners were the same, their reply is almost identical. The witnesses produced by the Management and the petitioners before the Enquiry Officer were also the same and the impugned dismissal order is also the same. Even in this Court the respondent produced the same evidence in all the four cases and fact the evidence of the respondent was recorded in only one case i. e. Maqbool Ahmad v. Millat Tractors Limited and the same is to be read in all four cases by consent of the parties.
2. Mr. Saeed Tariq made a complaint on the 3rd of March, 1982 that, on 2nd March, 1982 he was standing at the bus stop outside the factory gate; Muhammad Iqbal helper driver also reached the bus stop and caught hold of the complainant from his hairs and struck his head against the head of the complainant who fell down and Maqbool Ahmad, Riaz Shahid and Abdul Ghafoor also started beating him. The occurrence was witnessed by Mr. A. D. Khadim, Mr. Ehsan Shah and Mir Hassan Chaukidar who saved the complainant from the four persons mentioned above. Then he went to the house of Mr. Sikander, Technical Manager, the latter told him to get first aid and then make a report in the office on the following day. Consequently the complainant got himself medically examined from Mr. Muhammad Siddique, Police Surgeon and then made a complaint on 3rd March, 1982 to the Senior Manager Administration (Mr. Zaid Akhtar) alongwith the medical certificate.. He has given in his very complaint, the background of this incident which is as under :- ' On 1st March, 1982 a day before the alleged occurrence, the complainant went to Anwar Supervisor and made a demand of Fry Wheel and Adopter Plate. Anwar directed him to ask Iqbal driver to bring these spare-parts. The complainant asked Iqbal to bring both these parts but he refused and replied that he was not servant of the complainant. He then went to Mr. Suhail, the Senior Manager Production and informed him of the situation. Mr. Suhail told him to call Supervisor Anwar who had gone to the toilet, therefore, he took away Bajwa Supervisor to Mr. Suhail and on his direction Bajwa Supervisor also asked Iqbal driver to bring the spare-parts but Iqbal petitioner again refused. Meanwhile Supervisor Anwar also came there and he made a request to lqbal petitioner to bring the spare parts because the unit had stopped its production. Thereafter Iqbal petitioner threatened the complainant that he shall teach him a lesson.
3. On this complaint (Exh. RW-1/4) explanation of the four persons namely, Muhammad Iqbal, Maqbool Ahmad, Riaz Shahid and Abdul Ghafoor was called for. Muhammad Iqbal petitioner admitted the fight in his written reply but stated that Saeed Tariq was the aggressor. His version as given in his explanation is, that he was standing at the bus stop when Saeed Tariq also came there, used abusive language and attacked him although he tried to avert the situation, they were separated by the other people and then he left for his house. On the following day he came to know that Saeed Tariq had made a complaint against him and he had been suspended. He has added that the incident had taken place outside the factory premises, therefore, no law of the Respondent Mills was violated. The reply was submitted on 6th March, 1982 at 4 p. m. The reply of other three petitioners was that they had separated Saeed Tariq and Iqbal without taking any part in the fight and they have been wrongly implicated in the incident. These replies were also submitted the same day i. e. 6th March, 1982 but the Management was not satisfied and they decided to hold an enquiry. Mian Muhammad Bashir, Advocate was appointed at the Enquiry Officer. All the four petitioners appeared before him, they were defended by an Advocate, they cross-examined the witnesses produced against them and produced their own defence evidence.
The Enquiry Officer, on the close of enquiry gave his report Exh. R. W. 1/3 wherein he found all the four accused guilty of the charge. He left it to the Management to decide whether accusation did fall within the ambit of Standing Order 15(3) of the Standing Orders Ordinance, 1968. On receipt of this report a second show-cause notice was issued against all the petitioners and they submitted their separate replies wherein they reiterated the same contention originally taken by them in their first explanation. ' Their replies were found unsatisfactory and all the petitioners were dismissed from service vide order dated 13th June, 1982. The petitioners served grievance notices individually through their Collective Bargaining Agent and then filed the present petition.
' The respondent has filed a written statement, admitted that the petitioners were their employees but the enquiry proceedings and the impugned order of dismissal was defended as legal and valid. It may be stated here that implementation of the dismissal order was suspended by my learned predecessor and the petitioners are still continuing in service.
4. Both the parties produced oral and documentary evidence in support of their contentions.
5. The Management had produced four witnesses before the Enquiry Officer including the complainant. The petitioners were given full oppor-tunity to cross-examine these witnesses. In defence the petitioners produced Muhammad Siddique, Muhammad Ramzan and Muhammad Shard. The medico-legal certificate was also produced before the Enquiry Officer. Mir Hassan and Ehsan Ullah did not support the complainant and they were declared hostile. The complainant, therefore, made an application before the Enquiry Officer for recalling Mir Hassan and A. D. Khadim because these witnesses had given two writings in which they had supported the complainant and they had to be confronted with those writings because their subsequent statement before the Enquiry Officer were different from their previous writings and both the parties were afforded full opportunities to cross-examine these witnesses. I can very well understand the reason why A. D.
Khadim and Mir Hassan subsequently resiled from their previous written statements. It was because the petitioners had formed themselves into a pressure group and they would go to the extent of manhandling (as happened with the complainant) if any person dared to oppose them.
Obvionsly an ordinary human being will not like to put himself in danger of physical beating for the sake of others. It was precisely for this reason that A. D. Khadim and Mir Hassan did not support the complainant whereas their true statements of incident is the one which they have made in black and white much after the occurrence. In PLD 1980 Lah. 518 at page 524 it was held that it is not uncommon in the rural society for people to shun giving evidence against an accused for quite often a courageous truthful witness has to pay heavily afterwards in the sense that the party against whom he appears retaliates some times in most undesirable and unpleasant manner. In these circumstances to sum up courage to appear as witness in the Court against an accused is by no means an easy task. " Let us, for the time being, discard the statement of A. D. Khadim and Mir Hassan yet there is ample evidence on the record to hold that the story of the complainant is correct and petitioners are guilty of the offence charged. In the first instance there is no reason whatsoever on the record as to why Saeed Tariq complainant should A falsely implicate four petitioners and then why Syed Ehsan AU Bukhari should depose against them. I am not prepared to believe that a person will indulge in falsehood without any motive. The statement of com-plainant, Syed Ehsan Ali Bukhari and the two writings of Mir Hassan and A. D. Khadim, given soon after the occurrence, prove, misconduc of the petitioners.
6. Iqbal petitioner has himself admitted the occurrence but his version in that the Saeed Tariq was the aggressor and the contention of other petitioners is that they had just separated the two combatants. If the matter was really so simple why the Police Surgeon, the Enquiry Officer, Syed Ehsan Ali Bukhari and the entire Management became inimical towards the petitioners? Is there not a single truthful person in the entire Management to side with the petitioners if they were really innocent ? What appears is that the petitioners had created so much harassment in the factory that, at this critical juncture, no body came to their rescue and even A. D. Khadim and Mir Hassan yielded to their pressure and did not support the complainant before the Enquiry Officer. Their attendance cards go a long way to prove that all of them left the factory at one and the same time and the subsequent fight in dispute speaks volumes for the fact that all this was pre-planned. The matter was immediately reported to higher officer and the complainant was also immediately examined by the Police Surgeon soon after the occurrence, therefore, three was no possibility of fabrication or concoction. The incident was immediately entered in the night duty office register also. As against this version of all the petitioners (except Iqbal) is that Saeed Tariq and Iqbal petitioner were grappling with each other and they separated both of them. In order to prove this contention the petitioners had produced Muhammad Siddique, Muhammad Sharif and Muhammad Ramzan as P. W. 1, P. W. 2 and P. W. 3 respectively. The petitioners appeared as their own witnesses, Muhammad Siddique has stated that Muhammad Iqbal petitioner and Saeed Tariq came outside the factory : they had exchanged hot words and then they started fighting.
Thereafter the people separated both of them. He has stated in examination-in-chief that he was not in a position to say who had started abusive language. Muhammad Sharif stated that he was present at the place of occurrence alongwith Muhammad Ramzan, Muhammad Siddique and Iqbal petitioner. Saeed Tariq complainant also reached there and asked Iqbal that if he owned any money to some other person then who was Iqbal to ask him about that. Saeed Tariq abused and started fighting with him. Thereafter they were separated by the other workers and Maqbool Ahmad, Riaz Shahid and Abdul Ghafoor were out of those who separated Iqbal and Saeed Tariq.
After recording the statement of these two witnesses the Enquiry Officer has reported that Muhammad Ramzan witness was present but he did not wait and the enquiry was adjourned to 4th April, 1982 for defence evidence although the Management representative had opposed the adjournment. The statement of Muhammad Ramzan was recorded as P. W. 3 and he has stated that he was waiting for the bus on 2nd March, 1982 at 6-45 p. m. Alongwith Muhammad Siddique, Muhammad Sharif P.W. 3 and Iqbal petitioner, Meanwhile Saeed Tariq complainant reached there and asked Iqbal petitioner that if he had any with some other person petitioner had nothing to do with that Iqbal petitioner asked him to stand quietly but Saeed Tariq caught Iqbal petitioner from his neck and Iqbal petitioner also retaliated; they started grappling and they were separated by the people. Maqbool Ahmed petitioner stated that he was present on 4th March, 1982 outside the factory gate and Abdul Ghafoor and Riaz Shahid petitioners were also with him. Saeed Tariq and Iqbal petitioner were fighting at the bus stop and they were separated by Muhammad Ramzan, Muhammad Siddique and Muhammad Sharif, by the time they reached there Iqbal petitioner and Saeed Tariq had been separated. Abdul Ghafoor petitioner has stated that he found Saeed Tariq and Iqbal petitioner fighting and the people separated both of them. Riaz Shahid has stated that on 2nd March, 1982 when he came out of the factory premises he found that Iqbal petitioner and Saeed Tariq were fighting with each other. Maqbool Ahmad and Abdul Ghafoor had also come out of the factory gate alongwith him and they separated both of them. This defence version appears to be concoction, afterthought and remains unproved from the evidence on record. Saeed Tariq made complaint soon after the occurrence and has named A. D. Khadim, Ehsan Ali Bokhari and Mir Hassan as P. Ws. And these are the persons who were produced before the Enquiry Officer. The defence version was given by the petitioners in their first reply to the charge-sheet and I have already stated their respective stands in the preceding lines. They did not mention the name of any P.W. Who was subsequently produced at the time of enquiry. It means they were still to search out the witnesses in support of their defence. I have already stated the statements of D. Ws. Before the Enquiry Officer and minutely seen, all those statements are different from each other. According to Iqbal petitioner he was standing at the bus stop when Saeed Tariq came there and started fighting.
This statement itself does not stand to reason. Why Saeed Tariq should reach the place of occurrence and start fighting ? It is again unbelievable that Iqbal petitioner, although complainant was fighting with him, would just try to avoid the situation without moving his little finger. It is against normal human behaviour. It shows how much truthful Iqbal is. The statement of D.Ws. Are full of material discrepancies which makes the defence version unbelievable. For instance Muhammad Siddique says that he was not in a position to say who started the fight whereas the entire case of the petitioner is that the fight was started by the complainant. This witness has not given the same version which is given by Muhammad Iqbal petitioner nor he has mentioned Riaz Shahid, Abdul Ghafoor and Maqbool Ahmad as persons who separated Saeed Tariq and Muhammad Iqbal petitioner, and in this way he contradicts the entire defence story of all the petitioners. Strangely enough this is not the case of Iqbal petitioner also in his reply to the charge- sheet (Exh. P-3) ; he has nowhere mentioned that these petitioners separated him from Saeed Tariq. Muhammad Sharif has named Maqbool Ahmad, Riaz Shahid and Abdul Ghafoor as the persons who separated Iqbal petitioner and Saeed Tariq but the story that Saeed Tariq owed some money to another person and Iqbal had pointed out Saeed Tariq to that creditor was, for the first time, introduced by Muhammad Sharif in his statement and then he is supported by Ramzan. It is neither in the statement of Muhammad Sharif nor in the written reply (Exh. P-3) of Iqbal petitioner.
Therefore, I take this story as afterthought. According to Maqbool Ahmad petitioner Saeed Tariq and Iqbal petitioner were separated by Ramzan, Muhammad Siddique and Muhammad Sharif and they had been separated before he reached the spot. The statement is all the more fantastic and against the very stand of Abdul Ghafoor, Maqbool Ahmad and Riaz Shahid petitioners given in their reply to the charge-sheet. The defence version is, therefore, not only mutually contradicted by the statements of the petitioners themselves but is also contradicted by their own witnesses. I cannot help observing that all the DWs are Maliks by caste and it is not uncommon in the lower staff of the Mills to form groups on the basis of caste, perhaps this Malik group of the Millat Tractors Limited decided to support the petitioners. Their statements were rightly rejected by the Enquiry Officer.
7. The different interim orders passed by the Enquiry Officer on the enquiry file shows his impartiality and he has afforded full opportunity to cross-examine the P.Ws. And produce their defence evidence also. He has same time granted adjournments on the request of the petitioners although these adjournments were opposed by the complainant.
8. The contention of learned counsel for the petitioners was that the fight had taken place outside the factory premises, therefore, it did not constitute misconduct but this proposition has no force because the occurrence which had taken place in front of the factory gate was necessary consequence of what had happened between Iqbal petitioner and complainant inside the factory about the spare parts, both the incidents cannot be separated from each other. Secondly, the acts subversive of discipline even beyond factory hours constitute misconduct. It was so held in 1969 PLC 789. Again in 1978 PLC 439 and 1964 PLC 342 it was held that "time and place are not the only material factors to determine the question of misconduct". The second contention of learned counsel for the petitioners was that the person who had passed the impugned order was not competent to pass that order but this position had not been taken up in the grievance notice therefore, it cannot be allowed to be raised at this stage as held in 1975 PLC 196. Besides, it was held in 1982 CLC 1970 that "the whole heirarchy rather that an individual can be Employer of a worker and concept of Appointing Authority and dismissing Authority as in the case of Civil servants is not attracted to Labour laws. The third contention of learned counsel for the petitioners was that the petitioners could not be dismissed from service because they had made an application before the Registrar under section 8-A of the Industrial Relations Ordinance for registration of Labour Union and it was pending before him when the Management dismissed the petitioners. This contention is again repelled on the basis of 1975 PLC 196 because this contention was also not raised in the grievance notice. Learned counsel for the petitioners contended that petitioners are layman and they were not aware of the technicalities of law. In the first instance this distinction has not been made in 1975 PLC 196 so as to say that the proposition of law contained in this Authority shall apply to literates only and not the illiterate. Secondly, the petitioners cannot set up this defence of illiteracy because the written reply of- Iqbal petitioner to the charge-sheet is that act complained of does not constitute misconduct because the incident happened outside the factory limits. If a worker can raise such intricate question of law in his E written reply to the charge-sheet it cannot be said that he is illiterate. Thirdly, the contention of pending of an application under section 8-A of the Industrial Relations Ordinance is factually incorrect. This contention is falsified by letter (Exh. RW-3/6) from the Registrar of Trade Unions to the Senior Manager Millat Tractors Limited wherein he has stated that there is no union registered in the name and style of Inqalabi Union and no application in the prescribed form has been received in the office of Registrar of Trade Unions for registration. This official letter carries a presumption of legality and regularity and very strong evidence is required to rebut this evidence which the petitioner had failed to produce. There is no reason for the Registrar to write such a letter to the respondent if in fact there is some proper application before him. The correspondence between the Managing Director and other officials/ officers (Exh. R W-3/5) shows that the impugned order had been passed by the Managing Director on 13th June, 1982 and he was obviously competent to pass this order.
9.The upshot of what has been stated above is that the four petitions have no force and the same are dismissed, leaving the parties to bear their own costs.