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Corruption In India
The Bombay High Court on Wednesday extended till December 27 the stay on its order granting bail to former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh in a corruption case being probed by the CBI. A single bench of Justice M S Karnik on December 12 granted bail to the 73-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader in the corruption case but said the order will be effective after 10 days, as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sought time to challenge it in the apex court. The probe agency on Friday moved the Supreme Court but the plea would be heard only in January 2023 after vacation. On Tuesday, the CBI, through Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh urged Justice Karnik of the high court to extend the earlier stay till January 3. This court had granted bail but it was not to be effected. The Supreme Court doesn't have a vacation bench, unfortunately. So the order may be extended till January 3, Singh had said. When the matter was called on Wednesday, the ASG urged
The Supreme Court on Thursday said a public servant can be convicted for illegal gratification in a corruption case on the basis of circumstantial evidence when there is no direct oral or documentary evidence against them. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice S A Nazeer said complainants as well as the prosecution should make sincere efforts so that corrupt public servants are brought to book and convicted so that the administration and governance become unpolluted and free from corruption. "In the absence of evidence of complainant (direct or primary), it is permissible to draw an inferential deduction of culpability," the bench, also comprising justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna, V Ramasubramanian and B V Nagarathna, said. The top court said that even if direct evidence of the complainant is not available, owing to death or other reasons, there can be conviction of the public servant under the relevant provisions. "In the event the complainant turns hostile or has died
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on October 31 a plea seeking to establish special anti-corruption courts in every district to decide cases related to various economic offences like money laundering and tax evasion within one year. According to the cause list of October 31 uploaded on the apex court website, the petition is slated to come up for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice U U Lalit and Justices S R Bhat and Bela M Trivedi. The PIL filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay has also sought directions to high courts to take appropriate steps to decide cases related to economic offences. The PIL, filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, contended that the Centre and State governments have also not taken appropriate steps in this regard. None of the government departments are corruption-free, it submitted. Due to long pendency and ineffective anti-corruption laws, even after 73 years of Independence and 70 years after becoming a socialist secular democratic