HC frowns over bribes

Chennai: The Madras High Court has expressed concern over bribery, terming it a "shameful" act which has become a 'fashion.'

The court's observation came recently while upholding the orders of a single judge reinstating a head constable, against whom corruption charges had been levelled. The court stressed the need to impart training to enquiry officers to hold departmental proceedings against delinquent employees.

A division bench of Justices S Vaidyanathan and A A Nakkiran gave a direction to this effect recently.

A case was registered against head constable O Baskaran in 2014 for an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act for demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 1,500. He was arrested and remanded to judicial custody. Consequent to the arrest and remand, he was placed under deemed suspension and aggrieved by the same, he filed a writ petition in 2017 and a single judge later ordered his reinstatement with other benefits. Aggrieved, the ADGP (L&O) and the Police Commissioner preferred the present writ appeal.

The order of suspension is not a punishment and the relationship between the employer and the employee subsists even during the period of suspension. When there is master and servant relationship, the suspension can be effected by the employer and it cannot be questioned except on certain grounds like competence of the authority issuing the said order, want of jurisdiction, contrary to the rules. When the order of suspension has been questioned by the petitioner, the single judge, taking note of the fact that no departmental enquiry was initiated, allowed the petition and directed the appellants to reinstate and post the writ petitioner in a non-sensitive post, which is perfectly valid in the eye of law and is justified, as taxpayers money should not be wasted in the form of payment of subsistence allowance without extracting any work, the bench said.

It went on to say that "it is very painful to state here that the demand for bribes has become a fashion and such a shameful/begging act is measured depending upon the work/department. In olden days, for doing extra work, bribes were demanded in Revenue, Registration, Corporation and other similar departments . Of late, corruption is in existence almost in all the departments, because of the quiescent attitude of the government higher officials. The root of corruption extended its branches to a larger extent and started affecting the society like termite," the High Court bench

further said.