Court finds corruption complaint against head constable false, issues C Summary

Complainants had given false address; constable had only 1% more asset than income

A complaint of 2010 by a Ratnagiri resident alleging corruption by a head constable serving with the city police as well as making serious charges of his running a brothel and providing women to police officers was found by a sessions court to be false whereupon the court issued a C Summary.

A ‘ C Summary’ is issued when no offence is found to be committed by the accused or the complaint is found to be ‘neither true or false’ or ‘false but not maliciously false’.

In the instant case, Additional Sessions Judge GB Gurao said the complaint is ‘false but not maliciously false’. The Anti-Corrution Bureau (ACB) which had registered a case in 2016 against head constable Vijay Kadam had made an application seeking that the court issue a ‘C Summary’.

An ACP-level officer, who had conducted a detailed investigation into the complaint by going into the movable and immovable assets of the head constable, had found that Kadam had only 1.311 percent disproportionate assets to his known sources of income. The ACB sought a C Summary in the case relying on an apex court judgment which said that if disproportionate property is less that 10 percent of the income of the accused, then it cannot be held as disproportionate property.

The court had issued notices to the complainants Shantaram Kadam and another complainant Anupkumar Singh who claimed to be a member of a human rights organization and whose complaint had reiterated allegations of the former.

The court referred to the report filed by ACP Vaibhav Patil which showed that the head constable had only 1.311% more property than his income and relying on the apex court judgment, the court said that prima-facie it appears that the complaint is not maintainable.