In the judgment passed on Thursday, the bench said the verification report reveals the thumb impression on all the documents — application form, OMR sheet and other documents is same. (Representational Image)QUASHING AN order by which the Railway Recruitment Cell had rejected the candidature of a person on the ground of mismatch of writing and signatures in his documents, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday ruled the opinion of fingerprint expert will prevail over the opinion of hand writing expert when there is a choice between the two.
“Admittedly, the science of hand writing is weak science, whereas science of finger print is perfect science. Therefore, in case, there is choice between opinion of hand writing expert and opinion of finger print expert, opinion of finger print is safe to be relied upon,” the division bench of Justices Rajiv Sharma and Kuldip Singh in the verdict pronounced on Thursday.
The Railways Recruitment Cell had rejected the candidature of a Bhiwani resident Naveen Kumar in 2015 after his signatures and writing in the job application’s declaration form and other declaration made during the course of examination in document verification form were not found same. He had already passed the written examination and was also declared successful in the physical efficiency test. The Central Administrative Tribunal rejected his application for appointment in 2016.
The High Court last year observed that the concerned authorities in the case while relying on the opinion of the hand writing expert had drawn an inference of impersonation in the matter which “was a serious error as it was not established conclusively…impersonation during an examination is a serious matter and if the conclusion is merely to be arrived at an assumption or an inference without conclusive verifiable information it can have serious repercussions affecting the prospects of an aspirant adversely”. It had also ordered the authorities to verify the thumb impressions present on the application form and other documents.
In the judgment passed on Thursday, the bench said the verification report reveals the thumb impression on all the documents — application form, OMR sheet and other documents is same, adding that, it means the person who filled up the application form, appeared in the examination and appeared at the time of scrutiny of documents are one and a same person.
“Since, it is not disputed that applicant-petitioner was a successful candidate, respondents are directed to complete all formalities for his appointment and consequently issue him appointment letter, as per result declared by them, considering that as a result of comparison of thumb impressions, he is same person, who had applied for Group ‘D’ post and was successful in same,” the order reads, while giving four weeks time to the authorities for compliance.
