Supreme Court: Corruption undermines human rights

Refraining from making any comment on the plethora of scandals hitting the headlines invariably every day, the Supreme Court has ruled that corruption “undermines human rights” and asked the judiciary to sparingly use its power to suspend the sentence awarded to corrupt public servants.

“Corruption is not only a punishable offence but also undermines human rights, indirectly violating  them, and systematic corruption, is a human rights’ violation in itself, as it leads to systematic economic crimes,” a bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla ruled on Tuesday.

This judgment came in an appeal filed by the anti corruption branch of Maharashtra seeking quashing a Bombay high court verdict that had suspended the sentence awarded to a state excise department officer Balakrishna Dattatrya Kumbhar over four years ago. A year later, the SC had stayed the controversial HC order.

Kumbhar had been convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act for possessing disproportionate assets and sentenced to two years imprisonment besides being fine Rs 1 lakh.
Kumbhar’s appeal against the special court’s judgment sentencing him with two years of jail and fine has been pending before the HC for over four years. The State’s counsel PP Malhotra, an additional solicitor general, had contended that the HC should  have “considered the ramifications of such suspension (of sentence), as such an order would, no doubt      demoralise the employers (government) and also other public servants”. He said Kumbhar’s case wasn’t an exception that required an exceptional order.

Slamming the HC order, Malhotra had also said, “It is nothing but an abuse of the adjudicatory    process of law and justice demands that he (Kumbhar) should be treated as a corrupt and guilty person, unless he is proved to be innocent.”

Contesting the ASG’s contentions, Kumbhar’s lawyer had sought scrapping of the state’s appeal because it moved the apex court after four and-a-half years of the order of suspension of sentence passed by the HC.

Making it clear that its observations in the Kumbhar case wouldn’t adversely affect the hearing of his appeal by the HC, the apex court Judges recalled another judgment in the KC Sareen case holding that “when a public servant is found guilty of corruption by a court, he has to be treated as corrupt until he is exonerated by a superior court in appeal/revision”.