Every other public servant accused of corruption will escape the clutches of law if courts begin to harp on technicalities and encourage the attempts of the accused to fill the gaps in their defence with the assistance of legal brains, the Madras High Court has said.
Justice P. Velmurugan said, a public servant must be able to account for his/her assets at the time of investigation or during the course of trial. Failure to do so could not be covered up by finding fault in the prosecution’s case to secure an acquittal during the appeal proceedings, he added.
The observations were made while confirming the conviction, one-year rigorous imprisonment, and fine of ₹1 lakh each imposed on former Puducherry MLA Ashok Anand and his father C. Anandane, who had served as general manager of Puducherry Agro Service and Industries Corporation Limited and also in the Public Works department.
Dismissing two criminal appeals filed by the father-son duo, challenging the verdict passed against them by a special court for Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) cases in 2018, the judge said, the appellants had failed to satisfactorily account for their assets despite the grant of sufficient opportunity.
“Subsequently, with the aid of a legal brain, they cannot try to fill the gaps and escape from the clutches of law. If this court encourages such type of defence, no public servant can be put into clutches of law. They will simply escape by taking advantage of technicalities and other defects in investigation,” the judge observed.
During the hearing of the appeals, the appellants’ counsel brought to the notice of the court that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had accused Anandane of having accumulated wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income during the check period spanning from January 1, 1997, to January 7, 2006.
His son Mr. Anand was accused of having abetted the offence. Though Mr. Anandane’s wife too had been included as the third accused in the case, she died during trial and hence, the offence against her got abated. The trial court found both the father and the son guilty of the charges levelled against them.
The CBI’s case was that the accused owned assets worth only ₹15.87 lakh during the beginning of the check period but it had grown to ₹4.69 crore at the end of the check period. The prosecuting agency further claimed that the accused had earned an income of ₹1.46 crore and incurred expenditure of ₹68.82 lakh during the period.
Therefore, it laid a charge sheet before the special court claiming that the quantum of disproportionate assets was ₹3.75 crore (255.91% more than known sources of income). However, after a full-fledged trial, the special court found the disproportionate assets to be only ₹1.74 crore (110.59%) and not ₹3.75 crore, as claimed by the prosecution.
Since the prosecution had miserably failed to compute the disproportionate assets properly, the appellants were entitled to acquittal, the counsel argued. However, Justice Velmurugan refused to accept the argument and said, such a defect on the part of the CBI could not be taken advantage of by the accused.
“Mere defect on the part of the investigating agency (in calculating the exact quantum of disproportionate assets accumulated by a public servant) may not be a ground affecting the case of the prosecution and the accused are not entitled to get acquittal on that ground,” he wrote.
The judge directed the trial court to secure the custody of the appellants and make them undergo the sentence.
Published - January 15, 2025 03:13 pm IST
