Dear Natraajhan,
Hope you would like to agree with me that reading between the lines does not make sense so far as legal implications of the EPF law are concerned. In your attachment, you have provided merely an extact of seemingly some newspaper but without providing the link of the judgment as a whole. You have not even made any mention of the date of judgment and the newspaper with dated in which the said news item appeared.
We should be aware of the fact that the background and basis of appeal and arguments in the trial on what has been held by any court of law are most relevant to be taken in to account before arriving at some definite conclusion for guidance point of view. So, any advice or guidance based merely on some news item can tend to mislead the advice seeker and the HR community, as can lead to illegal acts of the executors of labour and service laws.
Moreover, your extract of news item states, "the apex court held that "in the case at hand, trainees were paid stipend during the period of training. They had no right to employment, nor any obligation to accept any employment, if offered by the employer. Therefore, the trainees were apprentices engaged under the "Standing Orders" of the establishment. That being so, the view of the learned single judge as affirmed by the Division Bench of the High Court cannot be faulted."
The question arises, did you see if the querist has said anywhere that the apprentice was being paid only stipend (not wages), or engaged under the Standing Orders?
So, your advice, to be frank, does not seem to be tenable as against the definition of employee included in Section 2(f) of the EPF Act.