He tried to get discharged 3 times. The Supreme Court said: no more.

He was an executive engineer accused of amassing wealth far beyond his salary. Three times he asked the court to drop the case. The third time, the High Court agreed — until the Supreme Court stepped in.

The trial had already run for years. Seventeen witnesses had given their testimony. The accused had already tried twice to walk away. Then, in the middle of the trial, he filed a third application to be discharged — and this time, the Karnataka High Court let him off. The Supreme Court of India, in State of Karnataka Lokayukta Police v. S. Subbegowda, reversed that decision in August 2023. The question was not whether the accused was guilty. The question was whether the High Court had the power to shut down a trial mid-way — and whether the accused had lost that right by waiting too long.

When the Lokayukta knocked

S. Subbegowda worked as an Executive Engineer in the Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board from 1983 to 2007. In December 2007, the Karnataka Lokayukta Police registered a case against him. The allegation: he had accumulated assets that were disproportionate to his known sources of income — a criminal offence under Section 13(1)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (the law that punishes public servants for owning wealth they cannot explain). The thin file of the FIR, numbered Crime No. 22/2007 and later renumbered 62/2008, marked the beginning of a long procedural journey.

The State Government granted sanction to prosecute him in September 2010. Without that sanction, under Section 19(1) of the same Act, no court could take cognizance of the case. The sanction was the government's formal permission to put a public servant on trial — a single sheet of paper that held the power to either commence or block a prosecution.

The first two attempts to escape

After the charges were framed, Subbegowda filed his first discharge application — a request under Sections 227 and 239 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (the procedural law that allows an accused to argue that there is no case against them before the trial begins). The trial court — the Principal District and Sessions Judge, Bengaluru Rural — dismissed it in February 2013. The courtroom was quiet as the judge read out the order; the accused's first door had closed.

He filed a criminal revision before the Karnataka High Court, which disposed it off with directions in July 2013. Then came the second discharge application. This time, Subbegowda did something unusual: he filed a handwritten memo stating he was not pressing the application. The paper, folded and submitted to the court clerk, effectively told the court, "Go ahead, frame the charges." The court obliged. In December 2014, charges were formally framed under Section 13(1)(e) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The trial began. Witness after witness took the stand. Seventeen of them had already been examined, their depositions stacking into a thick file on the Special Judge's desk. The smell of old paper and ink filled the room as each deposition was recorded and signed.

The third application — and a new argument

In June 2018, with the trial well underway, Subbegowda filed a third discharge application. This time, his argument was different. He claimed that the State Government was not competent to grant sanction for his prosecution. His reasoning: he was an employee of the Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board, a statutory body. Only the Board could remove him from service. Therefore, only the Board — not the State Government — could grant sanction under Section 19(1). The sanction was invalid, he argued, and the entire prosecution should collapse.

The Special Judge (the trial court judge handling corruption cases) dismissed this application in June 2018. The judge held that the objection about the sanctioning authority's competence should have been raised much earlier — at the time of cognizance or at charge-framing, not in the middle of a trial after 17 witnesses had already testified. The courtroom fell silent as the judge pronounced the dismissal; the accused's third attempt had failed at the trial level.

Why the High Court said yes

Subbegowda then approached the Karnataka High Court under Section 482 of the CrPC — the High Court's inherent power to prevent abuse of its own process or to secure the ends of justice. In August 2018, the High Court allowed his petition and discharged him. The court accepted his argument: the sanction was invalid because the wrong authority had granted it. The crisp sound of the judgment being pronounced echoed through the courtroom as the accused walked free — temporarily.

The Lokayukta Police appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's three reasons

The Supreme Court bench — Justice Aniruddha Bose and Justice Bela M. Trivedi — reversed the High Court in a crisp judgment delivered on August 3, 2023. The courtroom fell silent as the bench read out its reasoning. The court gave three distinct reasons why the High Court should not have interfered.

First: the statutory bar under Section 19(3). This provision of the Prevention of Corruption Act states that no order passed by a Special Judge on the question of sanction shall be reversed or altered by any appellate or revisional court unless that court records an opinion that a failure of justice has actually occurred. The High Court, in exercising its powers under Section 482 CrPC, was acting in a revisional capacity. It had not recorded any finding that the absence of a valid sanction had caused a failure of justice. The statutory bar applied directly. As the Supreme Court observed, the provision was designed to prevent exactly this kind of mid-trial disruption — a safeguard that the High Court had overlooked.

Second: the accused had waived the objection. Under Section 19(4) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, a court considering the validity of sanction at a late stage must take into account whether the accused could and should have raised the objection earlier. Subbegowda had filed two discharge applications before. He had not pressed the second one and had consented to the framing of charges. He had waited until 17 witnesses were examined. The Supreme Court held that he had waived his right to challenge the sanction at that stage. The handwritten memo from 2014 — the one where he told the court to proceed — now stood as evidence of his own consent.

Third: the application was not maintainable mid-trial. Once cognizance is taken and charges are framed, the trial cannot be stopped or scuttled by an interlocutory discharge application. The proper stage to raise the validity of sanction is at the time of cognizance, at charge-framing, or at final arguments — not in the middle of the trial. The Supreme Court made clear that allowing such applications would turn the trial process into a series of procedural ambushes, undermining the efficiency of corruption prosecutions.

The precedent that sealed it

The Supreme Court relied on its own earlier decision in Nanjappa v. State of Karnataka (2015), which had interpreted Section 19(3) and Section 19(4) in a similar manner. In that case, the court had held that the bar on reversal of a Special Judge's order on sanction grounds was absolute unless a failure of justice was recorded. The court also cited State of M.P. v. Bhooraji (2001) and Shamnsaheb M. Multtani v. State of Karnataka (2001) to reinforce the principle that procedural objections about sanction cannot be used as a sword to kill a trial after it has substantially progressed. These precedents, stacked like the depositions on the judge's desk, formed a wall that the High Court's order could not breach.

What the court ordered

The Supreme Court set aside the High Court's order. It directed the Special Judge to proceed with the trial from the stage it had stopped, as expeditiously as possible. But the court left one door open: Subbegowda could still raise the issue of the validity of sanction at the final stage of arguments — when the trial concludes and both sides present their closing submissions. The operative order was clear: the appeal was allowed, the High Court's discharge was reversed, and the trial would resume where it had paused.

THE PLAY: If you are a public servant accused of a corruption offence, challenge the sanction to prosecute you at the earliest possible stage — before cognizance or at charge-framing — because waiting until mid-trial will almost certainly be treated as a waiver.

The trial would resume where it had stopped — with seventeen witnesses already heard, their depositions still stacked on the judge's desk, and the accused's final argument still waiting to be made. The courtroom, once silent during the Supreme Court's pronouncement, would soon echo again with the voices of lawyers and the rustle of case files as the Special Judge prepared to take up the matter from where it had been interrupted.