Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has quashed a three-year-old vigilance case against senior IAS officer Bijay Ketan Upadhyaya, citing serious procedural lapses in the sanction for prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The court held that the flawed process undermined the very foundation of the case, rendering the prosecution legally vulnerable.
Upadhyaya, a 2009-batch IAS officer currently serving as Secretary of the Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department, had been facing charges following allegations dating back to late 2019. He was accused of demanding and accepting illegal gratification of Rs 1 lakh to clear bills of an empanelled supplier while posted as Director of Horticulture. Odisha Vigilance sleuths allegedly caught him red-handed on December 30, 2019, leading to his arrest and subsequent suspension. He was later reinstated in 2020
A single-judge bench of Justice Sanjeeb Kumar Panigrahi, while delivering judgement on April 17, set aside the January 16, 2023 order of the Special Judge, Vigilance, Bhubaneswar, which had taken cognizance of offences charged against him under Sections 7 and 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code.
In a detailed 41-page order, Justice Panigrahi emphasized the mandatory requirement of prior valid sanction under Section 19 of the PC Act for prosecuting public servants. The petitioner argued that the sanctioning authority was not provided with key exculpatory material, including a crucial recording from December 24, 2019,
which vitiated the sanction order.
“Cognizance against a public servant under the PC Act is not a matter of mere form, but is conditioned upon the existence of a valid sanction granted upon due consideration by the competent authority. If essential material was in fact not placed before that authority, the defect cannot be dismissed as a mere technical lapse,” Justice Panigrahi observed.
He added that such an omission “strikes at the fairness of the decision-making process underlying the sanction itself and, consequently, at the legal foundation on which cognizance has been taken,” describing it as a “serious procedural infirmity.”
Justice Panigrahi also highlighted the prolonged delays in the case, noting that despite cognizance being taken over two years earlier, charges had not yet been framed. He referred to this as part of a broader “slow violence of pendency” in vigilance prosecutions, where delays at investigation, charge sheet, cognizance, and framing stages cause undue reputational and personal harm to the accused. “A vigilance prosecution, by its very nature, carries a burden far heavier than the ordinary weight of a criminal case,” he noted, warning that such delays risk turning proceedings into punishment without trial.
Quashing the cognizance order and all subsequent proceedings, the court ruled that the defects went to the “foundational legality of the prosecution.” However, it clarified that the competent authority remains free to reconsider and grant fresh sanction after examining all relevant materials in accordance with law. “While the scope of interference… is undoubtedly narrow, … where the material placed by the accused is of such unimpeachable character that it completely undermines the factual foundation of the prosecution, the Court would be justified in exercising its power to prevent abuse of process and to secure the ends of justice,” he said, justifying the intervention.