JOIN USThe Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed an order by the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), which had reduced punishment of a sailor from dismissal to 75 days detention on the charge of slapping his senior on duty.
A vacation bench of Justices M Y Eqbal and Arun Mishra agreed to hear a plea made by the Centre and issued notice to R Karthik seeking his response.
Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the Centre, contended that the AFT's order would affect the morale of the services, if not stayed immediately.
He challenged the AFT's order which had upheld Karthik as 'guilty' but substituted the punishment of dismissal with detention for 75 days.
Karthik, who was part of the Aviation Core team on board of INS Gharial that had sailed from Visakhapatnam to Brunei, was awarded detention for 60 days for slapping his superior officer on May 29, 2013.
He had pleaded guilty. However, his punishment was enhanced by the administrative authority, the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, to dismissal from naval services. The dismissal was upheld by the Chief of the Naval Staff.
The AFT, however, altered the punishment and awarded detention for a period of 75 days, observing that sacking was not commensurate with the gravity of offence. It had held that the action on part of the officer to instigate Karthik by using explicit abusive language needed to be considered while mitigating the sentence.