Case and procedural background
In V. Gopalakrishnan v. State of Kerala, the Supreme Court of India dismissed an appeal against a conviction for possessing assets disproportionate to known sources of income. The judgment was delivered on 28 October 2026 by a Bench comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva in Criminal Appeal No. 5399 of 2025.
The appellant entered government service as a Lower Division Clerk in 1971 and became a Sub-Registrar in 1993. The prosecution examined his assets, income and expenditure over the period from 1 January 1993 to 16 January 2001.
The trial court convicted him under Sections 13(2) read with 13(1)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and imposed two years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹5.5 lakh. On 29 January 2025, the Kerala High Court maintained the conviction but reduced the sentence to one year’s rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹2 lakh, with three months’ rigorous imprisonment in default of payment.
Prosecution calculation of the assets
The prosecution placed the value of the appellant’s and his family’s assets at approximately ₹1.94 lakh at the beginning of the check period and ₹12.38 lakh at its end. Their income during the period was calculated at approximately ₹10.12 lakh, while expenditure was assessed at approximately ₹4.93 lakh.
The prosecution calculated likely savings at ₹5.18 lakh and the disproportionate assets at ₹5,25,129, representing 51.88 per cent of the income of the appellant and his family.
Arguments raised before the Supreme Court
The appellant contended that the prosecution’s case depended on estimates rather than reliable evidence. He disputed the household-expense calculation, arguing that the price-index method used by the prosecution did not reflect the circumstances of a government employee’s family.
He also challenged the valuation of a commercial-cum-residential building. While the prosecution assessed construction costs at approximately ₹8.59 lakh using Public Works Department rates, he claimed that the actual cost was ₹6.69 lakh and relied on a notebook containing expense entries.
Why the Court rejected the challenges
The Court found that the notebook contained scattered entries and had not been shown to be an account maintained in the ordinary course of business. The appellant had also failed to substantiate those entries in his testimony. In the Court’s view, he produced no cogent material sufficient to displace the valuation based on the applicable Public Works Department rates.
The Court also considered the appellant’s objections on the assumption that they were accepted. Even after reducing the building valuation by the disputed amount, the disproportion would remain above 33 per cent. Even after making the claimed adjustment to household expenses, the disproportion would still be substantial. The objections therefore did not undermine the essential finding that the assets were disproportionate to known income.
Legal principle: burden of explaining disproportionate assets
The Court clarified that the prosecution must first establish the foundational facts: the public servant’s known sources of income and the assets, financial resources and expenditure attributable to that person during the check period.
“Known sources of income” means sources identified by the prosecution through a lawful investigation; it does not mean every source that the accused may privately know about or later assert.
The prosecution is not required to disprove every hypothetical source of income. Once the prosecution’s evidence establishes a prima facie disproportion between the assets and the known sources of income, the evidentiary burden shifts to the accused to explain the excess. That explanation must be supported by cogent, reliable and verifiable material. If the accused fails to account satisfactorily for the assets, the court may draw an adverse inference.
The 10 per cent margin is not an automatic rule
The Court also addressed the appellant’s reliance on earlier decisions concerning a margin of 10 per cent in calculating disproportionate assets. It explained that the principle in Krishnanand Agnihotri v. State of Madhya Pradesh does not establish an inflexible rule that prosecution is barred whenever the excess is below 10 per cent. The assessment depends on the facts and circumstances of each case. In the present matter, the calculated disproportion was well above that level.
Relevant extract from the judgment
Supreme Court of India, V. Gopalakrishnan v. State of Kerala, Criminal Appeal No. 5399 of 2025, decided on 28 October 2026, paragraph 25:
“Once the prosecution establishes the disproportion between the assets possessed and the known sources of income, the burden squarely rests upon the accused to demonstrate, through cogent and reliable material, that the assets in question were acquired from lawful and legitimate sources. In the absence of such explanation, the prosecution cannot be faulted for its inability to establish facts which lie exclusively within the knowledge of the accused himself.”
This passage states the central evidentiary rule applied by the Court: after the prosecution establishes the foundational facts showing disproportion, the accused must support the claimed lawful source of the assets with credible evidence.
Final decision
The Supreme Court found no error in the concurrent conclusions of the trial court and the Kerala High Court. It held that the appellant had not satisfactorily explained the disproportionate assets, which remained above 26 per cent even on the assumptions most favourable to his objections.
The appeal was dismissed, the interim bail order dated 28 March 2025 was vacated, and the appellant was granted two weeks to surrender before the trial court to serve the remaining sentence.
