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The State, Central Bureau of Investigation v. A. Satish Kumar

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 11Decided 2 Jan 2025
Crl.A. No.-000898-000898 of 2024 (arising from SLP (Crl.) No. 10737 of 2023)
Justice C.T. Ravikumar · Justice Rajesh Bindal

Background

Two government employees, a Central Excise officer and a Railways accounts assistant, were booked by the CBI for allegedly demanding bribes in districts that, after the 2014 split of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, ended up within the new State of Andhra Pradesh, even though the CBI's Hyderabad (Telangana) branch registered and investigated the cases. The accused challenged the prosecutions before the Andhra Pradesh High Court, arguing the CBI needed fresh consent from the new Andhra Pradesh government to act there, and the High Court agreed, quashing the FIRs and chargesheets.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court disagreed and restored the prosecutions. It held that under the reorganisation law, all pre-existing "laws", including government orders granting the CBI general consent to investigate in undivided Andhra Pradesh, continued to apply in both successor states unless specifically repealed or amended, which had not happened here. It also held that because both accused were Central Government employees and the offence was under a Central Act (the Prevention of Corruption Act), the CBI did not need separate state consent in the first place, relying on its own precedent in Kanwal Tanuj and Fertico Marketing.

Lesson Learnt

When a state is split into two, the old state's laws, permissions and notifications continue to operate in both successor states until they are actually changed: administrative reorganisation alone does not create a legal vacuum that lets accused persons escape prosecution on a technicality.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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