Judgment

Arijit Pasayat, J.—It is a strange co-incidence that the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Act’) was enacted in the year of our country’s independence.

2. Corruption is one of the most talked about subjects today in the country since it is believed to have penetrated into every sphere of activity. It is described as wholly widespread and spectacular.

3. Corruption as such has reached dangerous heights and dangerous potentialities. The word ‘corruption’ has wide connotation and embraces almost all the spheres of our day to day life the world over. In a limited sense it connotes allowing decisions and actions of a person to be influenced not by rights or wrongs of a cause, but by the prospects of monetary gains or other selfish considerations. Avarice is a common frailty of mankind, and while Robert Walpole’s observation that every man has a price, may be a little generalized, yet it cannot be gainsaid that it is not far from truth. Burke cautioned “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot last long”.

4. In this appeal, the State of Andhra Pradesh has questioned legality of judgment rendered by a learned Single Judge of Andhra Prades