Corruption at higher echelons greater menace than hired assassins: Supreme Court

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said if the society in a developing country faced a menace greater than even the one from the hired assassins to its law and order, then that is from the corrupt elements at the higher echelons of the government and of the political parties.

A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan made the strong observations while rejecting a plea by Devinder Kumar Bansal against the denial of anticipatory bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to him. 

The bench said the presumption of innocence is one of the considerations, which the court should keep in mind while considering the plea for anticipatory bail. 

"The salutary rule is to balance the cause of the accused and the cause of public justice. Over solicitous homage to the accused’s liberty can, sometimes, defeat the cause of public justice," the bench said in its judgment on March 3, 2025.

The petitioner, an audit inspector, faced the FIR lodged against Vigilance Bureau on January 8, 2025 with Vigilance Bureau, Patiala for demanding bribe in connection with conducting of audit pertaining to development work undertaken during the tenure of the wife of the complainant as Sarpanch of the Gram Panchayat. 

The bench said if liberty is to be denied to an accused to ensure corruption free society, then the courts should not hesitate in denying it. 

The court also pointed out that the parameters for grant of anticipatory bail in a serious offence like corruption are required to be satisfied. 

It said, "Anticipatory bail can be granted only in exceptional circumstances where the court is prima facie of the view that the applicant has been falsely enroped in the crime or the allegations are politically motivated or are frivolous."

In the case, the bench noted no any exceptional circumstances have been made out for anticipatory bail and there was no frivolity in the prosecution.

"Avarice is a common frailty of mankind and Robert Walpole's famous pronouncement that all men have their price, notwithstanding the unsavoury cynicism that it suggests, is not very far from truth," the bench said.

The court noted as far back as more than two centuries ago, it was Burke who cautioned: “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot last long”. In more recent years, Romain Rolland lamented that France fell because there was corruption without indignation, the bench pointed out.

The court said, corruption has, in it, very dangerous potentialities. 

"Corruption, a word of wide connotation has, in respect of almost all the spheres of our day to day life, all the world over, the limited meaning of allowing decisions and actions to be influenced not by the rights or wrongs of a case but by the prospects of monetary gains or other selfish considerations," the bench said.

If even a fraction of what was the vox pupuli about the magnitude of corruption to be true, then it would not be far removed from the truth, that it is the rampant corruption indulged in with impunity by highly placed persons that has led to economic unrest in this country, the bench added.

"If one is asked to name one sole factor that effectively arrested the progress of our society to prosperity, undeniably it is corruption," the bench said.