SRINAGAR: Special Judge Anti-corruption Jammu, Tahir Khurshid Raina, has handed down a three-year prison sentence and imposed a Rs 50 lakh fine on the former Section Officer in the Planning Section of DC office Jammu, in a case involving disproportionate assets.
The court directed that if the convicted individual fails to pay the fine within two months, the District Collector will recover the amount from the convict’s disproportionate assets as arrears of land revenue.
Quoting the Supreme Court’s mandate, the court emphasised that “judges who bear the sword of justice should not hesitate to use that sword with utmost severity if the gravity of the offence so demands.”
In the hearing, APP Irshad Ahmed Sheikh represented the Vigilance Organization (now ACB), while Advocate G S Thakur represented the accused. The court noted, “keeping in view the level of corruption/misuse of official position prevailing in our officialdom and the huge ill-gotten wealth which is proved to be amassed by the convict, it is an appropriate case wherein to apply this mandate of the SC with its full rigour to give a bold, clear and deterrent message to the society at large and corrupts in particular of the consequences of the crime committed.”
The Special Judge stated, “Though it is by-gone now and time can’t be reversed to compensate all those who would have been victims of the uncontrolled avarice of the convict. However, they can be compensated differently. It is in this context this court finds it an appropriate time and opportunity to give a bold and deterrent message to the convict public servant and his ilk in the system that whatever has been acquired and amassed by him and proved to be disproportionate to his known source of income is to be taken back from him as a fine amount to be deposited in the Government treasury to be utilized for all sorts of welfare activities.”
The court further observed that the insertion of Section 8B in the J&K PC Act empowered the investigating officer to attach and seize the property of the public servant believed to have been acquired through acts constituting an offence of “Criminal-misconduct.”
Unfortunately, this provision was not invoked in the present case at the relevant time. However, the court addressed this lapse by invoking another provision of the Act as outlined in Sub-Section (4) of Section 5, which mandates that where a sentence of fine is imposed, the court shall consider the amount or value of the property obtained by the accused through the offence.
“As the convict is in his seventies and considering the long trial he has faced and being deprived of the company of his wife, who died during the course of the trial, this court does not feel it appropriate to award him the full dose of imprisonment prescribed in the Act for the commission of offences,” the Special Judge noted.
Accordingly, the individual was sentenced to three years of simple imprisonment and a fine for the offence under the J&K PC Act. The accused failed to account for disproportionate assets amounting to Rs 760,000 (excluding state land at Bathindi and Auqaf land at Gandhi Nagar on which he constructed two houses and more than 100 tolas of gold). Consequently, a fine of Rs 500,000 was imposed to be deposited in the Government treasury for the welfare activities of the people.
