What Is The Role Of Corruption In Criminal Justice

Introduction
To corrupt means to break. Since biblical times, corruption has been seen to be against morality and ethics. While the lord condemned it in the Bible, Chankaya saw corruption as a sign of ‘positive ambition’. Ironically, Don Corleone echoes similar views in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.
The Preamble of the Constitution of India commands the state to ensure for all citizens justice – social, economic and political. In this pursuit of justice, the Indian state adopted the system of ‘Criminal Justice Administration’. The Criminal Justice System aims at righting the wrongs committed by the perpetrators of crime, on the victims of these crimes, so as to ensure rule of law.
But this obvious aim is not the only objective of the Criminal

vs. S.C. Mittal & Others
According to CBI, in 2005, Dr. S.C. Mittal and V K Khanna (employees of Central Forensic Science Laboratory) along with a private individual Ramesh Sharma had allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to give undue advantage to Sharma in a case of property dispute filed by him against one Brahm Prakash Sharma. The court summarized:
"The present case involves the two senior scientific experts of CFSL who, by virtue of their position, were holding the reins of the administration being part of the system of investigation/detection, who allegedly got themselves involved with a private individual and diluted the expected standards of integrity and procedural skills expected of them while working on certain documents referred to CFSL for expert opinion by court.”
The learned judge made a strong comment by saying that the cause of people losing faith in the system is the erosion of moral values among people in general and public servants in particular. The court observed, “This situation has arisen as the public servants in power holding reins of administration, tend to identify themselves with the criminals and abettors, with an eye on their heavy purses, to the detriment of poor and

This ironical statement is quite apt when applied to current criminal law adminstration of India, both procedural and substantive. A gift of the colonial British Raj and a remnant of colonial jurisprudence, it operates oppresively on the very citizens our constitution guarantees to protect. The offence under section 167 of IPC is an example of a conduct in which the public servant not only lowers his own image, as well as that of the public administration system, but also erodes the confidence of the citizens in the public institutions. This erosion of faith, well identified by our courts, makes the structure of democracy brittle, which then starts crumbling. Corruption is driven by greed and greed is inevitable in a society where social status and the deemed respect a person gets from his/her peers depends on the person’s wealth. It is this perception that needs to be altered. Not only should our criminal law statutes prescribe strong punishments for such abuse of power by public servants and a better procedure for deliverying justice more effectively, but the society should also denounce this sort of conduct.