Employee Demanding Notice Period payment and Bonus After Absconding — Cable manufacturer, Noida
The Client: A steel cable manufacturing company in Noida with 180 employees and operations across North India.
What Happened: A senior operations manager stopped coming to work without any notice, intimation, or approved leave. He did not respond to calls, emails, or WhatsApp messages for 40 consecutive days. The company followed its employment policy — sending three registered letters to his home address asking him to report to work or explain his absence. He didn't respond to any of them. After 40 days, the company terminated him because he was absent without approval under the abscondment clause in his appointment letter.
Three months later, the former employee reappeared with a lawyer and filed a claim demanding: (1) ₹4.8 lakh as notice period salary (claiming the company should have bought out his notice period instead of terminating), (2) ₹2.1 lakh as his annual performance bonus (claiming he had earned it before absconding), (3) ₹6 lakh as compensation for "illegal termination" — totalling ₹12.9 lakh.
What the Evidence we collected from company:
- HR records showed that employee was absent from last 40 consecutive days — no leave application, no medical certificate, no communication of any kind
- Three registered letters were sent to the employee's home address — all three returned as "accepted" with delivery confirmation
- The employee's appointment letter clearly stated: "Absence without approved leave for more than 10 consecutive working days shall be treated as voluntary abandonment of employment"
- The company's abscondment policy — which the employee had signed during onboarding — required exactly the process that was followed: 3 letters, 40-day waiting period, then termination
- The performance bonus was payable only to employees on the company's rolls on the date of disbursement — a clause clearly mentioned in the bonus policy that the employee had acknowledged
- During his 40-day absence, the company discovered that the employee had been simultaneously working for a competing steel company — a clear violation of his employment contract
How SPJ Advocates Helped:
- Represented the company before the Court with the complete documentation trail — 40 days of absence records, three registered letters with delivery receipts, the signed appointment letter, and the signed abscondment policy
- Argued that the termination was not "illegal" — it was the direct consequence of the employee's own voluntary abandonment, as defined in his own signed contract
- Demonstrated that the notice period payment claim was legally baseless — the company terminated for misconduct (abscondment), not convenience, and the employee cannot claim notice period benefits when he himself abandoned employment
- Submitted evidence that the bonus was contractually payable only to employees on rolls at disbursement date — which the absconding employee was not
- Presented evidence of dual employment with a competitor as additional grounds for termination for misconduct
- Argued that allowing the claim would set a dangerous precedent — essentially rewarding employees for disappearing and then demanding money
The Result: The Court dismissed all three claims. The judge noted that the company had followed its own rules properly, the employee had left the job on his own, and no notice period payment was needed because the termination was for misconduct. The bonus claim was also rejected because the employee had already left before the bonus was paid. On top of that, the evidence showing he was secretly working for another company at the same time made his case even weaker.
