On March 10 this year, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, in reply to a question on the status of cases registered by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) since 2017, told the state Legislative Council that 310 cases were registered by the ACB. Bommai also produced an annexure signed by an ACB superintendent of police (HQ) detailing the status of each of the 310 cases. The annexure showed that the ACB filed B-reports or closure of investigation reports in 25 (8%) of the cases from 2017 to February 2022. However, on July 7, 2022, in a hearing of the Karnataka High Court where the functioning of the ACB has come under the scrutiny of Justice H P Sandesh, the bureau reported that B-reports or closure reports were filed in 99 cases of the ACB since 2016. An ACB document handed to the court for perusal reportedly indicated that with regard to corruption cases filed in 2021, two closure reports were filed and none were filed for cases registered by the ACB in 2022. When the data given to the Karnataka high court on July 7 by the ACB (99 B reports) is compared with data that was given to the Karnataka Legislative Council on March 10, 2022, by the ACB through the chief minister of Karnataka (25 B reports) it raises the question as to when closure/ B reports were filed for nearly 72 cases taken up by the ACB since the March data from the council indicates zero closure of cases filed by the ACB in the years 2021 and 2022. According to an analysis of the data of 310 cases of the ACB that was given to the Karnataka Legislative Council in March this year, B reports were filed for eight cases from 2017, seven cases from 2018, five cases from 2019, and five cases from 2020 - making it a total of 25 cases. However, in the high court on July 7, the ACB said that B reports had been filed in 99 cases since 2016, including two for cases from 2021 and none from 2022. This suggests that the ACB and the Karnataka government had not declared full information on the closure of corruption cases to the Karnataka Legislative Council in March or that closure reports were filed in as many as 72 cases since the submission of the ACB data to the Legislative Council in March. Karnataka High Court judge Justice Sandesh – who has accused the ACB of becoming a collection centre of bribes to protect corrupt public servants (during a hearing on June 29) – has suggested during court hearings that the ACB is hiding facts on the number of cases in which B-reports have been filed. The high court has now sought the year-wise data of B-reports filed by the ACB to establish whether the agency has withheld information sought by the court. “Now the ACB has produced the statistics from 2016 to 29.06.2022 without authentication and when this court insisted, authenticated the same and placed before the court wherein in 99 cases B-reports are filed and in column No.2021 and 2022 only given the details of B-reports of two in number pertaining to the year 2021 and for the year 2022, given the details of zero, and the same is not the true statement which is placed before the court,” the high court observed on July 7 while pointing out that B-reports had in fact been filed for four cases in 2022. The high court noted, in an order on July 7, that the state advocate general had earlier appeared before the court and stated that “all the material will be placed before this court without fail” and gave instructions to the ACB to produce the documents. The court rejected the ACB report on July 7 saying it is “incomplete” and “is not the true report” and called for year-wise data to be produced at the next hearing. “Hence, it is appropriate to call for B-report filed by ACB from the respective courts and these are the glaring examples of how ACB is working and not furnishing even the true report,” the high court observed on July 7. “The Registrar (Judicial) is directed to get the details of B-report filed by the ACB from 2016 till date, the details of crime number, offenses, date of filing of B-report and whether accepted or pending from the respective courts of each district,” the high court said last week. The functioning of the Karnataka ACB under the present BJP government in the state has been under a cloud over the last few years. According to the data given to the Karnataka Legislative Council in March this year by chief minister Bommai, the government has not provided sanction for the prosecution of government officials in 72% of the 310 corruption cases filed by the ACB since 2017. Out of a total of 310 cases registered since 2017 by the ACB, as many as 223 were awaiting clearances from the state government for criminal prosecution of officials on the basis of recommendations by the ACB, Bommai told the legislature in March. The ACB police replaced the quasi-judicial Karnataka Lokayukta in 2016 (after it was stripped of its police powers to investigate corruption due to internal corruption in 2015) as the main agency vested with powers to carry out investigations of corruption in Karnataka. The ACB functions under the state government and not under retired judges like the Lokayukta. According to the data placed in the Legislative Council by Bommai, in as many as 248 cases (80%) of the 310 cases registered against government officials by the ACB since 2017, a chargesheet has not been filed, with recommendations for action having been sent to the state government in 223 (72%) cases. According to the data, as many as 27 cases (9%) were under trial in the courts in March, in 25 cases (8%) a closure report was filed after investigations, and in as many as 10 cases (3%) there has been a stay, acquittal or quashing of the probe. “The ACB would have registered an FIR and conducted investigations but there would be no permission for prosecution. Many cases have lapsed this way and I am calling for these records,” the Karnataka chief minister told the Legislative Council in March. “There is now a practice in many departments to create an internal committee comprising secretaries and deputy secretaries. This committee examines the findings and they decide that there is something improper prima facie and they direct for exoneration of the official concerned. We are calling for all such cases,” Bommai stated. Among the cases pending government sanction for prosecution for the last five years in March were cases against a Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) chief engineer K T Nagaraj and an assistant executive engineer in the Bangalore Development Authority P D Kumar, accused of amassing wealth disproportionate to income in FIRs dated February 27, 2017. “I have issued specific instructions to do away with all these internal committees. It should be a direct process. If there is a recommendation by the ACB it should come to the government and we will decide about it. If there is prima facie evidence, then the ACB should get automatic sanction for prosecution,” Bommai said. “There are a lot of vested interests and we want to end this kind of practice. In future, if a prima facie case is made out, then prosecution sanction will be given automatically,” he told the Council.
