Anticipatory bail in corruption cases requires exceptional circumstances; mere involvement in financial fraud without compelling evidence does not justify bail.

ORDER :

A. BADHARUDEEN, J.

The 1^st accused in Crime No.VC/06/2025SIU-1 of 2025 of VACB, Thiruvananthapuram, has filed this petition seeking pre-arrest bail.

2. Heard the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned Special Public Prosecutor representing the VACB.

3. Perused the records placed by the learned counsel for the petitioner and the records placed by the learned public prosecutor.

4. The prosecution case as per the FIR runs as under;

The 1^st and 2^nd accused while working as Industries Extension Officers (IEO) in the Industries Department who were responsible for implementing development schemes and are entrusted with the authority to grant loan subsidies to women under the BPL category (General) and the implementing officers of the project No. SO, 760/22 of Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, entered into a criminal conspiracy among themselves and others for implementing the self employment beneficiary group scheme and with the intention to cheat and cause wrongful loss to the government, fraudulently prepared forged documents and misappropriated funds by creating false records, manipulated the list of eligible beneficiaries for the subsidy under the scheme, and created fake bills and other documents, disbursed subsidies to these fake beneficiaries, who were not entitled to receive any benefits, during the financial year 2021-2022. They were alleged to have misappropriated a total amount of Rs 1.14 Crores during the period of 1^st accused from September 2021 to March 2022 and during the period of the 2^nd accused from March 2021 to September 2021. Loans were granted to ineligible women who were not enlisted in the beneficiaries list approved by the Corporation Council and without verifying the authenticity of the documents submitted by them, violating the procedures and the guidelines of the scheme, by abusing their official position, dishonestly and fraudulently committed criminal misappropriation, breach of trust and by forging the documents, used such documents as genuine and granted subsidy to those illegal beneficiaries. Subsequently, the officials caused disappearance of documents by willfully misplacing the original records from the said file which caused the issuance of the loan subsidy and thereby government had sustained a wrongful loss of Rs 1.14 Crore and corresponding gain to accused and thus thereby the accused are alleged to have committed the offences punishable U/s 13 (2) r/w 13 (1) (a) of PC (Amendment) Act 2018 and 409, 420, 468, 471, 120(B) & 34 IPC.

5. The following grounds have been urged by the learned counsel for the petitioner while seeking anticipatory bail to the petitioner. The same are as under:

“A. The prosecution version is unsustainable in law or on facts.

B. The petitioner is falsely implicated in the crime. He has absolutely no role in the preparation of beneficiary list. Therefore he cannot be mulcted with any liability for the percolation of bogus groups.

C. Pressure was mounted upon him to expedite the disbursement of subsidy amount to avert lapse of amount during the financial year by Annexure-VI notice by the secretary of corporation. There is no supporting staff to the petitioner.

D. The petitioner has no rational connection or nexus with accused (A3) and (A4). The transactions fastened upon the petitioner for the cumulative amount of Rs.1.14 crores, there is not even a single transaction to Aswathy Suppliers of 3rd accused. The transactions levelled against Aswathy Suppliers has absolutely no connection of whatsoever with the petitioner.

E. The transactions to the 38 groups to a tune of Rs.1.14 crores of which 17 groups are genuine ones. The transactions to the 17 genuine groups come to Rs.51 lakhs. He intercepted