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92. Flowing from the statutory framework and on a cumulative reading of Ss. 12(1) and 12(2) of the CRPF Act, 1949 and rls. 27 (a) and 36

(a) and (b) of the CRPF Rules, 1955 it follows, and this court is inclined to think that actual physical imprisonment in a prescribed prison is a condition precedent to dismissal from service. The prescribed prison is the nearest jail but not the Court room where the petitioner was sentenced to simple imprisonment till the rising of the Court. This appears to me to be the legal position. I may say and not without some trepidation that sentencing left in the hands of a layperson who is not trained in the criminal law as a Judge in ordinary courts may lead to manifestly disastrous and dangerous results in the quest of truth and justice. The platidunious expression of justice being delivered from the 'temple of justice' should not be mixed up with or converted into sentencing a person arraigned in the dock to be incarcerated to jail in a mock judicial trial. If the offender belongs to the paramilitary force it does not mean that the scales of justice will tilt against him anyhow. The true value of procedural safeguards in criminal law cannot be undermined in matters involving the constabulary in the paramilitary forces. They may be special citizens though serving under reasonable curtailments of rights enjoyed by civil society but their fundamental rights can be seen restricted or abrogated by Parliament under Article 33 of the Constitution being charged with maintenance of public order but still they deserve to be dealt with under the overarching constitutional scheme of fundamental freedoms and guarantees of cherished rights in Part III of the Constitution, if not by all of them, but at least some of those protected by Articles 14, 16, 20 (3) and 21 of the Constitution which permeate through the interstices of the criminal justice dispensation system. One may see a facet of Article 14 and 16 in relation to armed forces subjected to court interference in the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Major General H.M.Singh v. Union of India & Anr.; (2014) 3 SCC 670. The CRPF Act and its provisions, as I see them, neither restrict nor take away such minimal protections from a constable, namely, of a fair and independent trial, fair disciplinary action, fair conviction, fair sentence and fair application of the rule of law. They have a right not to be tried and convicted by a Kangaroo court, where the rudimentary principles of criminal jurisprudence and its fair procedure established by law are thrown to the winds and constables in CRPF made scapegoats on the altar of good order and discipline without just and sufficient cause or probative evidence to prove a criminal charge laid by the Commandant criminal court palming them off as pariahs by a whimsical order of sentence of "till the rising of the court"; which to put shortly was thought to be quod erat demonstrandum. It is something akin to what appears to have happened in this case when one sees the original record of the trial proceedings which look more like a lopsided departmental enquiry than a full-fledged and fair criminal trial, a difference which is clearly noticeable from the Commandant/CJM's file. It is less of justice and more of self-serving a predestined and predetermined end, the trial motions gone through mechanically without help of defence counsel to the undertrial and the checks and balances of fair procedure. I would agree with Mr Sharma's lament that a fair deal was not given to Zuber Ahmed at the trial and on the other hand was dealt with rather roughly. Therefore, the impugned dismissal order and the appellate order confirming that order deserve to be set aside being non est and ab initio voidable being based on no evidence with the complainant not supporting the case of the prosecution. The sentence imposed on an offender/delinquent should after all reflect the true crime/misconduct they are alleged to have committed duly proven beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt or even on a preponderance of probabilities, as the case may be, from criminal trial to disciplinary proceedings and the result in either case has to be proportionate to the seriousness of the alleged offence. Always in passing sentence, the Court has not only to bear in mind the nature and the limit of the punishment prescribed for the offence of which the accused is found guilty, but also the nature and the limit of the punishment which it is empowered to impose.