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Judge refuses bail to graft accused

NEW DELHI: Continuing his crusade against corruption, Justice S. N. Dhingra of the Delhi High Court has refused to suspend sentence and grant bail in yet another case of a public servant demanding and accepting bribe for performing his duties.

In the last couple of months Mr. Justice Dhingra has refused to suspend sentences and grant bail in almost all cases that have been marked to him for consideration.

In each case where he has refused to grant bail and suspend sentence, his premise is that “corruption is spreading like cancer in the country and it requires to be fought without ifs and buts”.

His other rationale for rejecting the pleas is that normally corruption cases at the appeal stage take years to decide as they go up to the Supreme Court.

In the present case, Mr. Justice Dhingra refused to grant bail to and suspend the punishment of five years’ rigorous imprisonment awarded by a trial court here to the Resident Medical Officer (RMO) of the Tihar Central Jail hospital.

The Anti-Corruption Branch of the Delhi police claimed to have caught the doctor red-handed while demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs.10,000 from an inmate suffering from a heart ailment for referring him to a private hospital for further treatment in 1999.

As the inmate was not ready to grease the palm, he had lodged a complaint with the Jail Superintendent who in turn forwarded the complaint to an Additional Director-General of the prison who passed it onto the Anti-Corruption Branch.

The Anti-Corruption Branch laid a trap and caught the RMO, Dr. Ramachandra, red-handed, the charge-sheet said.

Rejecting his pleas for bail and suspension of sentence, Mr. Justice Dhingra said people charged with corruption generally manage to obtain double benefits from the court: suspension of sentence and bail on appeal and later commutation of their terms of punishment in the name of old age and the other age-related problems.

“They (accused facing corruption charges) should not be allowed to enjoy the dual benefits,” Mr. Justice Dhingra observed.

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