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CAT Patna refuses to quash IPS officer Aditya Kumar's disciplinary case, wants inquiry in six months
The Patna bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal has declined to quash disciplinary proceedings against Bihar IPS officer Aditya Kumar, who is accused of a conspiracy to impersonate a former Patna High Court Chief Justice. It asked the State to finish the inquiry preferably within six months.
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The Patna bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has refused to quash disciplinary proceedings against Aditya Kumar, a Bihar-cadre IPS officer who is accused of being part of a conspiracy to impersonate a former Chief Justice of the Patna High Court. The tribunal has told the State to carry on with the inquiry and, preferably, to finish it within six months.
The bench of Justice Narendra Kumar Johari, the judicial member, and Kumar Rajesh Chandra, the administrative member, decided the matter in a petition titled Aditya Kumar v. Union of India. One report dates the decision to 13 October 2026. The officer had asked the tribunal to set aside the disciplinary action against him. The CAT hears service disputes of officers of the central services, including the IPS, and its orders can be taken to the High Court. Kumar is at present the Commandant of the 14th battalion of the Bihar Special Armed Police.
The allegation behind the case
The case goes back to an FIR registered by Bihar's Economic Offences Unit in October 2022. It alleged that someone impersonated the then Chief Justice of the Patna High Court and contacted the Director General of Police and other senior officials in order to influence decisions. Aditya Kumar, a 2011-batch officer, was named in the conspiracy and was suspended. The allegations against him have not been proved in a court, and the criminal case is still pending.
What the tribunal said
The bench held that a pending criminal case does not stop the government from looking into the same conduct as a matter of service discipline. The two proceedings serve different purposes, the tribunal said, and one does not have to wait for the other. This is a settled position in service law. A criminal court must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before it convicts, while a departmental inquiry asks the lower question of whether misconduct is more likely than not, and it can end in a penalty that has nothing to do with imprisonment.
The officer had argued that the disciplinary action was driven by malice, because it came soon after orders extending his suspension were voided. The bench did not accept that argument. It observed that chronology, or the closeness of two events in time, does not by itself establish bad faith, and it found nothing else on the record to show it.
The tribunal also set conditions for the inquiry. The State must give the officer a fair opportunity to defend himself. If he does not cooperate, the State may proceed in his absence, which is what the legal term ex parte means, and his non-cooperation must not be used as a reason to stretch the inquiry. The six-month period is a target, not a hard deadline. His claim to promotion was not decided at this stage.
For an officer of the All India Services, a departmental inquiry can end in anything from a censure to the withholding of promotion, a reduction in rank, compulsory retirement or dismissal, depending on what is proved and how serious it is. The tribunal's order does not say which of these, if any, will follow. It says only that the process should go on and be fair.
A separate matter that went his way
The order came days after a different ruling in the officer's favour. In a separate matter dating back to his time as Senior Superintendent of Police in Gaya, he faced allegations of taking a liquor-recovery case lightly, of not controlling subordinate police-station officials properly, and of not carrying out periodic inspections. According to one report, the tribunal ruled in August that the inquiry report in that matter should be treated as quashed and that he should be considered eligible for promotion to Deputy Inspector General. The Bihar Home Department then issued a resolution on 16 October closing those departmental proceedings.
The two matters should not be mixed up. Closing the Gaya proceedings removes one obstacle to promotion, but it does not end the case over the alleged impersonation, which the tribunal has now allowed to go forward. Promotion to DIG also depends on the applicable promotion process and service rules, so the closure alone does not mean he has been promoted.
The State now has to complete the inquiry on the impersonation allegation. If it finishes within the period the tribunal has suggested, a decision on his service future could follow in the first half of next year. The criminal case will proceed on its own track in the courts, and its outcome may well matter more to his career than either of the departmental inquiries.
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