Srinagar, July 21, KDC: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has ruled that an anti corruption investigation into allegations of disproportionate assets comes to an end with the death of the accused public servant and cannot be pursued against his legal heirs through attachment proceedings.
Holding that criminal liability is personal and does not survive death, the Court quashed the Anti Corruption Bureau’s FIR, set aside the attachment of multiple properties and directed that they be restored to their original owners.
Justice Rahul Bharti delivered the judgment while deciding two connected writ petitions arising from an Anti Corruption Bureau investigation against Rakesh Kumar Pargal, a Junior Assistant in the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department, Udhampur, who was accused of possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. The investigation had its origins in a preliminary enquiry initiated in 2015, which was followed by registration of an FIR in August 2020 alleging that the public servant had amassed extensive movable and immovable assets in his own name and in the names of family members.
During the investigation, the ACB attached several properties, including the commercial establishment known as “Feeling Farms” banquet hall and a residential property at Devika Vihar, alleging that they represented the proceeds of corruption or were benami assets linked to the accused public servant. The attachments were confirmed by the Designated Authority, giving rise to multiple appeals and writ petitions by his son Dheeraj Pargal and other property holders challenging the action.
While the litigation remained pending, Rakesh Kumar Pargal died on November 3, 2022. The High Court observed that his death fundamentally altered the legal landscape because the investigation had neither concluded nor resulted in the filing of a final police report or commencement of criminal prosecution.
Examining the scheme of Sections 8B to 8E of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir Prevention of Corruption Act, Justice Bharti held that the statutory mechanism governing attachment and eventual forfeiture of property is intrinsically linked to the underlying criminal investigation and prosecution. The Court observed that attachment proceedings are not an independent exercise capable of surviving in isolation once the criminal process itself comes to an end.
The court held that forfeiture proceedings had never reached the stage contemplated under the statute because the Special Court had not confirmed the attachments for the purpose of forfeiture and the investigation itself had not culminated in a prosecutable case. In those circumstances, the Court ruled that there remained no legal foundation to continue attachment proceedings after the death of the accused public servant.
In one of its strongest observations, the High Court invoked three well established legal maxims, observing that “crimes are extinguished by death”, that heirs cannot be punished for the crimes of a deceased person, and that penal actions do not pass to legal representatives. Justice Bharti held that even if the attachment proceedings had otherwise survived to the confirmation stage, the death of the accused necessarily brought the entire process to a close because criminal liability is personal and cannot be transferred to successors.
Holding that the FIR and all consequential proceedings had become legally unsustainable, the Court quashed the corruption case, declared the attachment proceedings infructuous and directed restoration of all attached properties to their original owners.
Senior Advocate P. N. Raina, assisted by Advocate J. A. Hamal, appeared for the petitioners, while Senior Additional Advocate General Monika Kohli, assisted by Nazia Fazal, represented the Union Territory. (KDC)
