'Variegated Cancerous Concoctions of Corruption.' This is What Sasikala Verdict Judge Wrote

Supreme Court judge Justice Amitava Roy has written an essay on corruption that blasts corrupt public servants and cautions that judges should not be held back by artful defences.

 The essay has been written in context of Jayalalitha’s corruption an disproportionate assets case and is annexed to the Supreme Court’s 570-page order upholding the 2014 trial court conviction of Sasikala, Elavarasi and Sudhakaran.

 It is in rare situations that judges meander to opine beyond the issues raised before them in fact and law. In this case, Justice Roy has written the additional essay on corruption calling out the Jayalalitha-Sasikala case for “novelty in the outrages and the magnitude of nefarious gains”.

 The strongly-worded essay will require you to sit with a dictionary to wade through phrases such as “variegated cancerous concoctions of corruption” .

 But beyond the verbosity, the judge has a very clear and serious message about corruption and the state it has put Indian society in.

 Justice Roy declares the corrupt persons as morally debase and says they are responsible for the “widening divide” between “the haves and the have-nots.”

 The judge notes that corruption is a “pestilent presence” in almost all walks of life and society has “reconciled to the octopoid stranglehold of this malaise with helpless awe”.

 “Corruption,” the judge writes, “is a vice of insatiable avarice for self-aggrandizement by the unscrupulous, taking unfair advantage of their power and authority and those in public office also, in breach of the institutional norms, mostly backed by minatory loyalists.”

 In this case, the public servant involved in amassing disproportionate assets and at the centre of laundering the ‘ill-gotten’ money is the late former Tamil Nadu CM, J Jayalalitha.

 Justice Roy has joined out that the public servant’s duty lies towards discharging duties for public welfare, in adherence with constitutional values. He writes that corrupt officers also demoralise and disillusion the just and upright officers.

 The breach of duty to serve one’s own interests is a betrayal of the oath taken by public servants, he says.

 Justice Roy recommends that citizens have to partner in the anti-corruption mission to achieve a “just and ideal social order” that freedom fighters sacrificed their lives for.