Court Rejects Debarring Of Students Accused Of Theft; Orders Community Services Instead
The Bombay High Court rejected the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS)Pilani, Goa campus’ decision to debar two students from their semester examination as part of disciplinary action. The Court instead ordered the two students to do community service for two hours every day for two months. The court gave relief to the engineering students who were facing the stringent measures taken by the institute’s administration for stealing items such as chocolates, potato chips and pens during an event. The students had approached the Court after the institute imposed the heavy punishment of a Rs 50,000 fine and debarring from one of the semester examinations.
The incident that led to the case happened in November last year when five students were caught allegedly stealing potato chips, chocolates, sanitisers, pens, notepads, cell phone stands, two desk lamps, and three Bluetooth speakers from stalls. The students said that they thought the items they took were abandoned and apologized in writing after returning the items.
According to the case documents, the institute imposed a fine of Rs 50000 along with debarring all the accused students from attending in three semesters. But after challenging the decision, the institute retreated from barring three students from the exam, while maintaining the fine for all five accused. This decision led the remaining two students to approach the Court against debarring them from the examination. The Court in its final hearing also observed that the director of BITS-Pilani was provoked by the student’s decision to seek court intervention against his decision.
The institute advocate argued that the reduction of punishment at this stage will encourage the students to seek Court intervention against decisions given by the institute and will undermine the “time-tested disciplinary system of the Institute.”
However, the Court said: “We almost got the impression that the Director was irked by the fact that these two petitioners had dared to seek Court intervention against his decision… Again though, we are hurt by this approach of the Director of an Institute of Eminence, we refrain from saying anything more because we are mindful that the two petitioners before us have to complete their education with the respondents for the next few years and not be scarred for life due to indiscretion or even indiscipline indulged by them on this one occasion.”
The Court also said that the institute cannot ignore University Grants Commission directives by discriminating between two sets of students and “breach the principles of natural justice and fair play”.
