The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has imposed a cost of ₹2 lakh on the Life Insurance Corporation, Madurai, to be paid to the Cancer Institute, Chennai, for suppressing facts in a case.
The court was hearing two connected petitions. A petition filed by T. Karthikeyan sought to restrain the authorities from verifying his community certificate and to direct LIC to release his pension and other retirement benefits. Another petition was filed by LIC, Madurai, challenging the order of the State Level Inquiry Committee.
Shri Karthikeyan joined LIC in 1983 as Assistant under ST Reservation on the basis of certificate issued by Revenue Divisional Officer, Tirunelveli. He was later promoted as Development Officer in 1985. Since there were some doubts about the genuineness of his community certificate, the matter was referred to the RDO. The authority upheld the validity of the certificate in 1990.
Another verification took place in 1997 and a notice was issued to Mr. Karthikeyan, which he challenged. The court said that once the certificate is verified and found to be genuine, it cannot be verified again.
However, LIC claimed that it received some complaints supported by some documents and sought another reference to the certificate of the petitioner. The reference was closed in 2019. The closure order was challenged by LIC.
A division bench of Justices R Subramaniam and L Victoria Gauri noted that the verification was done by the competent authority immediately after the petitioner joined the service. A second verification was also done in 1990, which confirmed his ST status claim.
It was only in 1997 when verification was attempted for the third time that he challenged it. The court observed that LIC claimed that it received the complaint later along with some documents. That by itself will not provide grounds for re-verification. Fraud had to be discovered and the state-level inquiry committee was not empowered to conclude that the earlier verification was flawed.
The court said that LIC suppressed the fact that earlier verification was done and the community certificate was found to be correct by the authorities in 1990.
Only that vital information was conveniently hidden by LIC. “We are dismayed, shocked and appalled by such repression by a major financial institution in the country. We hope that such incidents are not repeated for minor favors from the court”, the court dismissed the petition filed by LIC. It directed LIC to pay pension and retirement benefits to Mr. Karthikeyan in four weeks.