Observing that “it is a common experience that the commercial tax office is considered to be one of the hubs of corruption”, the High Court of Karnataka upheld conviction of a commercial tax officer (CTO) on the charges of accepting a bribe of ₹5 lakh in 2008 for releasing a truck.
“Poor and gullible drivers would fall prey to illegal demands day in and day out. Only when greed is too high, some cases reach the higher-ups or the lokayukta. Many cases might have settled amicably, and very few cases of this nature would result in filing of the case and being brought to the logical end…,” the High Court observed.
Justice V. Srishananda passed order while dismissing an appeal filed by Padmanabha, who was working as a CTO at a commercial tax check post at Dhulked. The petitioner had questioned the Vijayapura district special court’s order of convicting him for accepting the bribe and sentencing him to imprisonment of four years.
The Lokayukta police had trapped the petitioner-CTO at around 5 a.m. on December 10, 2008, on receipt of the bribe amount from Subramanian, an employee of M/s. KMMI ISPAT Pvt. Ltd., for release of a truck that was transporting equipment from Chhattisgarh to the company’s factory at Koppal. The truck was detained at the check post for verifying documents of equipment on payment of value added tax.
Though the complainant-employee of the company had initially asked the truck driver to pay ₹1,000-₹2,000 to the CTO, he had lodged the complaint with the Lokayukta police when demand was made to pay ₹15 lakh as bribe and it was reduced only to ₹10.2 lakh after for ‘negotiation’.
The petitioner had claimed that it was another CTO who had detained the truck and issued notice for production of certain documents. The convicted CTO had also claimed that he had merely received ₹5 lakh as part of the total ₹10.2 lakh penalty amount required to be paid by the complainant and kept in the amount in the almirah as another CTO was not at the check post during the early hours.
Though the notice was issued by another CTO, both the courts refused to accept penalty amount claim while pointing out that there was provision in law to levy penalty when document verification process at check post level itself was not completed.
“It is only a few officers of the government misuse their official position forgetting their duty and loyalty to the State, resulting in eroding economy of the country at large. It is often said that world is not suffering from ‘violence of many’ but is suffering from ‘silence of many.’ Therefore, when a true complaint has taken recourse to the legal battle, his testimony cannot be disbelieved on flimsy reasons. The court has to take a pragmatic approach in appreciating the material evidence on record in a particular case,” the Court observed while upholding the conviction and sentence.
