Bribery has become routine in Karnataka, says HC while denying bail to IAS officer Manjunath

Justice Natarajan also pulled up the state government and the ACB for being lenient on Manjunath, a former Bengaluru Urban deputy commissioner, by merely transferring him to another department and not naming him in a corruption FIR despite a prima facie case of corruption emerging at the stage of the police complaint. The ACB arrested Manjunath on July 4 in a case involving a Rs 5-lakh bribe after Justice H P Sandesh questioned the ACB’s failure to implicate the IAS officer in the case.

“Therefore, knowing fully and without taking any action against the petitioner, the government has just transferred him to some other department,” the single-judge bench observed.

The ACB did not name the IAS officer as an accused despite a complainant stating that he had paid a
Rs 5-lakh bribe to officials at the deputy commissioner’s office for a favourable order in a property dispute, the bench said.

The court rejected the IAS officer’s bail plea despite two others accused of receiving the bribe on his behalf having been granted bail by a special court on account of the ACB failing to file a chargesheet within 60 days.

“Therefore, if the petitioner is granted bail, there is every possibility of tampering with the witnesses [sic], and destroying the evidence is not ruled out. Therefore, pending investigation, this petitioner is not entitled to bail,” the high court said.

The complainant, Azam Pasha, filed his bribery complaint against staff of the deputy commissioner’s office on May 20. He alleged that Manjunath had reserved his order in the land dispute on March 30, but his staff demanded the bribe.
The court observed that Manjunath’s office employed the “modus operandi” of handing over judicial orders without signatures to subordinate staff in order to take bribes. “The learned counsel for the petitioner contended that normally the order used to be prepared by the deputy commissioner and it would be given to the subordinates and thereafter, the deputy commissioner will pronounce the order, which reveals that it is the modus operandi of the revenue department for demanding bribes by keeping the order pending without pronouncing after it was prepared,” the judge said.

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The judge also recalled that it was only after another bench of the court interventioned that Manjunath was arrested.
The IAS officer’s bail petition was earlier rejected by the special court for corruption cases.

The government, the ACB and Manjunath approached the Supreme Court last month against the remarks that Justice Sandesh had made on the ACB’s functioning during a bail hearing.

The apex court stayed the remarks while allowing the high court to proceed with bail pleas on the grounds of their merit.