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Journalism of Courage
Twenty years after an officer of the customs department was booked in a case of disproportionate assets, a special CBI court this week cleared him of all charges. PN Murlidharan Pillai, now 71, was acquitted on Monday.
“From the investigation carried out by the investigating officer, it appears that he purposefully avoided to take into account the financial transactions of the wife of the accused as well as the status of previous criminal cases registered against the accused and return of foreign currencies to its lawful owner and, thereby, suppressed vital evidence and documents and got the sanction for prosecution by misrepresenting and misleading the Sanctioning Authority,” special judge SH Gwalani said in the order.
Pillai, a preventive officer of the customs department in Mumbai, was booked by the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Bureau under charges, including Prevention of Corruption Act, alleging that he had amassed assets of Rs 15.83 lakh, disproportionate to his known sources of income. An FIR was filed in 2000 and a sanction was given by a Union ministry to prosecute him.
Pillai’s lawyer, Amit Ghag, had argued that the investigating officerhad not taken into account several lawful incomes of the accused and his wife. It was also submitted that Pillai was booked in another case for possession of foreign currency but was acquitted from that case. It was submitted that despite the dropping of the charge against him in July 2001 in the other case, the CBI investigator sought a sanction in 2002 without mentioning that fact. The court concluded that based on other evidence as well, the assets, income and expenditure of the accused did not show disproportionate assets as alleged by the CBI.
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