Honest public servants should be protected from ‘unwarranted frivolous prosecution’, says court

Honest public servants should be protected from ‘unwarranted frivolous prosecution’, says court

COURTS STRESS ON SHIELD FOR THE HONEST, CENSURE FLAWED  PROBES

 Vineet.Upadhyay@timesofindia.com 07.10.2025

New Delhi : Observing that courts must protect honest public servants from “unwarranted frivolous prosecution”, a court acquitted one Ashutosh Vasant, a former director of a PSU, in a corruption case. There are officers who give their life and soul to build the institutions they work for, and therefore, such a lopsided approach needs to be discouraged, Special Judge Sunena Sharma stated on Sept 25. 

The court said it appeared that CBI wanted us to see a ghost where there was none and Vasant, when he was at the peak of his career, fell prey to unfulfilled ambitions of some of his disgruntled colleagues who started considering him as a stumbling block to their career ambitions. “Though the case is ending up in acquittal, the damage suffered by the accused on account of the allegations raised in this case is enormous, and unfortunately, in this entire process, the career of the accused got stalled, jeopardised and ruined,” said the court. In 2019, CBI booked Railtel director Vasant and two firms for alleged misconduct in officials’ travel to the United States in 2012. Railtel, a public sector company, runs a nationwide broadband, telecom, and multimedia network to modernise train control operation and safety systems of Indian Railways. According to the prosecution, Vasant travelled by economy class and raised a bill for business class. He allegedly did not produce any journey documents to hide the cheating committed by him in the purchase of tickets. 

The prosecution alleged that on the recommendation of Vasant and two other officials, Railtel selected the consortium of two companies—United Telecom Limited and Infinera — which were alleged to be non-compliant vendors, for the tender of dense wave division multiplexing technology. The judge did not find any cogent or credible evidence on record to support the prosecution case that the accused received Rs 2,06,500 in cash as wrongful gain or pecuniary advantage from a travel agency as a refund of the residual amount of his business class ticket and caused a corresponding loss to the govt exchequer. 

The court said a mere suspicion or an erroneous administrative decision (act or omission) taken in good faith cannot be transformed into a corruption charge in the absence of clear evidence of any pecuniary advantage. Highlighting that undoubtedly, a “zero tolerance” policy against corruption is the need of the hour to uphold ethical governance, the court said any investigation or trial should not start with a preconceived notion that all public servants are corrupt or dishonest