Punitive deterrence for corruption has always been abysmally lax in this country. A recent survey by Transparency International’s India chapter finds that bribery to get sundry jobs done has been on the rise. No surprise there. The culture of chai-paani bakshish for getting anything moving is our perennial bane. If the licence permit raj had its due share of Kafkaesque traits, the two-and-a-half decades of liberalisation has seen a spike in corruption on a scale not known or seen before. Also, in a country used to according primacy to knowledge over wealth, the economic reforms saw a tectonic shift in favour of the latter. Education models are increasingly utilitarian, and wealth, however ill-gotten, is the mark of attainment. This has fuelled and multiplied corrupt practices—it’s no aberration or distortion, it’s the all-pervasive norm. Rare is the walk of life that has not been besmirched by allegations of corruption.
Even so, the suspension order given by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi to a sitting judge of the Railway Claims Tribunal—which was pending for a few months—is the first of its kind. CJI Gogoi has been trying to reinculcate a cleaner work ethic back into the judicial system since he took oath. The RCT judge’s case is not one of mere bribery, it amounts to an alleged `50 crore scam: through misappropriation of claims via fictitious claimants at one level and claiming compensation for the same accident victim several times over, in connivance with a group of lawyers. The fraud, detected by an internal inquiry of the principal bench of the RCT, is being investigated by Justice U U Lalit.
Sitting RCT judge R K Mittal was transferred to Thiruvananthapuram from Patna after the scam was unearthed. Now the CJI’s approval has come for suspension. That a sitting judge could have been involved in siphoning off compensation funds only goes to show how deep the rot runs. A logical conclusion to this case would hopefully serve as a deterrent against corruption, at least in this one authority.