Pakistan's Supreme Court has ruled that serious misconduct by a civil servant in his private life, including violence against his wife, can amount to service misconduct even when it happens outside office hours and has no direct link to official duties.
The court dismissed a petition by Jawad Abbasi, an Intelligence Bureau employee who worked as a cook and was accused of setting his wife on fire, and upheld his compulsory retirement. He had challenged a Federal Service Tribunal decision that kept the departmental penalty in place.
In the judgment written by Justice Shahid Waheed, on a bench that included Justice Ayesha A. Malik, the court said the dignity of women was a fundamental constitutional value and that a civil servant's conduct at home could reflect on his fitness for public office and on the reputation of his institution. Violence, it said, did not become a private matter simply because it took place inside the home.
The court made clear that an FIR alone could not justify departmental punishment. In this case, however, the inquiry officer had recorded the statements of 13 witnesses in the employee's presence and allowed him to cross-examine them, and the inquiry independently established the charges, including the violence and an attempt to present the incident as his wife's suicide.
The judgment said criminal and departmental proceedings serve different purposes and use different standards of proof. An acquittal only means guilt was not proved beyond reasonable doubt; it does not certify innocence for departmental purposes or fitness for government service. Finding the penalty proportionate, the court refused leave to appeal.