Official Duty - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition official-duty

Definition :

Official duty, implies that the act or omission must have been done by the public servant in the course of his service and that it should have been in discharge of his duty, B. Saha v. M.S. Kochar, (1979) 4 SCC 177: 1979 SCC (Cri) 939.

The use of the expression 'official duty' implies that the act or omission must have been done by the public servant in the course of his service and that it should have been in discharge of his duty. The section does not extend its protective cover to every act or omission done by a public servant in service but restricts its scope of operation to only those acts or omissions which are done by a public servant in discharge of official duty, S.K. Zutshi v. Bimal Debnath, (2004) 8 SCC 31(38); see also State of Orissa v. Ganesh Chandra Jain, (2004) 8 SCC 40. (Cr. P.C., 1973, s. 197)

It implies that the act or omission must have been done by the public servant in the course of his service and that it should fall within scope of range of his official duty, Rakesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, (2006) 1 SCC 557.