Integrity Score 405
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Constitutional Adviser to Bikaner continues....
I sat on this tribunal for about a month and examined a considerable amount of evidence led by the Home Minister on one side and the local Praja Mandal party on the other.
We eventually produced a unanimous report to the effect that considerable money had passed from the traders for these permits but that there was no direct evidence to prove that this money had reached the Home Minister, rather than that it was pocketed by one of his trusted subordinates. We, however, expressed our strong suspicion that this must have been passed on to him.
A widely-respected and elderly Marwari witness gave evidence on oath that he had given Rs. 2 lakhs for obtaining a permit for export of 20,000 tons of gram and that he had made a profit of Rs. 4 lakhs in this deal.
In his account books the sum of Rs. 2 lakhs paid to the Minister or his subordinate had been shown as an advance to his minor children. When I asked this witness whether giving a bribe was not reprehensible conduct on his part, his answer was, “We are businessmen.
Had the permit not been given to us, we could not have made Rs. 4 lakhs. What does it matter if we shared this four lakhs with the person who granted the permit?” This is a typical illustration of the business morality of some of the businessmen in our country. When the report was given to the Maharaja, he did not like it and wanted certain changes to be made in it.
He sent his Private Secretary to me to Simla for this purpose. I had by then returned to the East Punjab High Court at Simla. I declined to make any changes.
The States Ministry wanted a copy of the report, but the Maharaja would not give it to them. When requested by Sardar Patel, I showed him a copy of this report and he was quite satisfied with it.
To be continued...