created by the respondent himself, to which the petitioner was neither a party nor a signatory. None of the said documents, Mr. Datar would strive to point out, was issued by his client. He submits that, when subjected to incisive cross-examination, the respondent himself acknowledged this lacuna, by admitting that he had no documentary evidence, with him, as would serve to demonstrate that the petitioner was his master, and he, its servant, as also that the name of the petitioner did not figure in any of the said documents, save and except the visiting cards exhibited as Ex WW-1/4, and on the envelope marked as Ex WW-1/15. There was no attendance register to indicate the respondent as having attended work at the petitioner’s, and the signature of the respondent, too, was to be found only in a a single handwritten “bill” exhibited as Ex WW-1/6, against which there was no evidence of any receipt of payment. Mr. Datar would submit that the onus, to prove the existence of employer-employee relationship, was squarely on the respondent, and that the Labour Court fell gravely in error in casting the said onus, instead, on the petitioner, in para 12 of the impugned order, which faulted the petitioner for not having produced evidence to indicate that the respondent was not its employee. At the same time, Mr. Datar sought to wish away the presence of the respondent, at the shop of the petitioner, at the time of visit by the Labour Inspector, by stating that the petitioner did, occasionally, take work from the respondent. Finally, Mr. Datar pressed into service the judgement of this Court in Chander Sen vs. J. B Garments, 160 (2009) DLT 18 , to bring home his point.
