KOCHI: The Kerala government is not ready to let retired IPS officer Jacob Thomas off the hook in a corruption case. Though the Kerala High Court had quashed the corruption case registered against him in connection with the purchase of a cutter suction dredger while he was the director of ports department, the state government has decided to challenge the order in the Supreme Court.
Jacob Thomas feels that the government is coming after him for openly taking a stand against corruption.”They trapped me. Now, they are using the case to intimidate and target me. I am being targeted for taking a tough stand against corrupt practices,” he said. “The High Court had quashed the FIR against me after finding that the case was foisted on me without any evidence. The court has delivered a detailed judgement specifying the reasons for quashing the FIR. The government wants to continue with its harassment,” said Jacob Thomas.
The government on March 23 had issued an order sanctioning filing of a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court against the HC order. The sanction was accorded based on the report filed by the advocate-general. It was on November 1, 2021 that the High Court quashed the FIR observing, “When culpability was attributed on the basis of a collective decision taken by a group of persons, one person could not be singled out from them and criminal proceedings could not be initiated against only one of them.”
The allegation against Jacob Thomas was that during his stint as the ports director from September 16, 2009 to March 17, 2014, he had proposed a tender for the purchase of a cutter suction dredger without the approval of the technical committee. He accepted the bid of IHC Merwede, Holland, in 2012 without obtaining a revised administrative sanction from the government.
The court observed the petitioner, either personally or in his official capacity as the director of ports, had not awarded the contract to the company. The decision to accept the tender of that company was the collective decision of the department purchase committee which included three representatives of the state government.