The conviction of former Kerala Director General of Police Tomin J. Thachankary in a disproportionate-assets case has understandably generated strong reactions. On September 17, 2026, the Court of the Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge (Vigilance), Kottayam, sentenced him to four years’ rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹30.84 lakh. The case related to assets accumulated between January 2003 and July 2007, which the prosecution alleged were disproportionate to his known sources of income. Thachankary has challenged the verdict before the Kerala High Court.

The legal process must therefore run its course. Yet the verdict raises a larger question:

Is corruption merely the misconduct of a few individuals, or does it persist because institutions delay action, society tolerates it, and political patronage protects it? How can this malaise be eradicated?

The history behind the case is almost as significant as the verdict.

The origin of the case dates to the early 1990s, when he was serving as Assistant Superintendent of Police in Alappuzha. A complaint concerning alleged disproportionate assets was subsequently pursued before the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The vigilance case was registered in 2007 and the charge sheet filed in 2013. The trial eventually concluded after the Kerala High Court directed that it be completed within a specified period.

Whatever the reason for pursuing the case, the episode demonstrates the role citizens can play in making institutions accountable. Laws do not enforce themselves. Accountability often begins with someone willing to document a concern, pursue a complaint and persist despite years of uncertainty. Citizens can become vital agents of accountability when governing institutions fail to act.

The verdict came several years after the officer’s retirement and only months after the ruling party lost the election. Timing alone does not prove collusion, political protection, or deliberate obstruction, and delay should not be treated as evidence of institutional wrongdoing. Even so, the sequence warrants closer scrutiny of whether formal checks and balances operated with sufficient speed and independence while the officer remained influential.

The timing of the conviction therefore raises legitimate concerns about the independence, responsiveness, and accountability of the legislature, executive, and judiciary.

The case also shows why many corrupt or unlawful acts remain unpunished: few people are willing or able to pursue them with similar persistence. Even when allegations reach court, a conviction requires proof to the prescribed legal standard. This safeguard is essential to justice and reflects the principle commonly associated with Benjamin Franklin (1785): “It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” It protects citizens from punishment based on suspicion, political pressure or personal grievance. At the same time, an acquittal for insufficient proof does not necessarily establish that no wrongdoing occurred.

Such cases are not confined to bureaucrats or executives but are alive among politicians and members of the judiciary.

This is only one case, resolved after years of complaints, investigation, litigation and judicial scrutiny. Many similar cases may never lead to charges, let alone convictions. This verdict may therefore represent only the visible tip of a much larger problem. Let this serve as a warning to everyone in a position of responsibility.

Kerala does not lack formal safeguards. The Kerala Government Servants’ Conduct Rules require public servants to maintain integrity and regulate the acquisition and disclosure of property. A 2018 amendment requires details of movable and immovable property to be furnished on entry into government service for recording in the Service Book or Gazetted Entitlement Register. The State also has the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Lok Ayukta framework. The Right to Information Act and the Enforcement Directorate also help monitor and deter corruption among those in positions of responsibility.

The real question is whether these safeguards work effectively in practice.

Their success depends on consistent enforcement, timely investigation, independent oversight and meaningful accountability when violations occur.

A serious examination of corruption must look beyond the official who accepts an illegal benefit to the political and institutional conditions that allow such practices to take root.

Politics is, in principle, a form of public service, but it also requires funding. Elections are costly, organisations need resources, and political activity inevitably creates networks of influence. Problems arise when funding sources and financial flows are opaque, or when legitimate channels of political finance are inadequate and insufficiently transparent.

Within this system, individual politicians may accumulate wealth and draw public officials into networks of patronage. Politics can also become a path to enrichment for politicians and the business interests that benefit from their influence. Although ties between business and politics are common, businesses often support multiple parties while favouring the one in power.

Addressing this system requires transparent political financing, traceable decision-making, recorded reasons for discretionary actions, independent oversight, stronger conflict-of-interest safeguards, and institutions and individuals able to act without fear or favour.

Corruption is the misuse of entrusted power for personal gain. When it becomes deeply entrenched and socially accepted, it reflects a broader failure of ethics.

Public debate often focuses on the official who accepts an illegal benefit, but corruption usually depends on a wider network of participants.

Corruption has both a demand side and a supply side.

Demand arises when people in positions of authority—politicians, political intermediaries, executive officials or members of the judiciary—seek money or favours to perform, delay or manipulate an official act, award a contract, grant special treatment, waive a penalty or overlook a legal violation.

Supply arises when individuals, businesses or agencies offer money or favours to jump queues, avoid penalties, win contracts or secure advantages outside the normal process.

Corruption takes root when private gain overrides the public good. It thrives because some are willing to pay money for improper benefits and others are willing to take money provide them. Only when supply and demand meet a price is struck and market thrives.

The solution, therefore, is not merely to punish recipients. It is also to simplify procedures, limit unnecessary discretion, protect complainants and reject the social acceptance of both giving and taking bribes.

Religions exist to sanctify the human soul, to crush insatiable greed, and to purify the human being. Every faith preaches the absolute necessity of austerity—simple living, detachment, and restraint. Yet today, India’s religious institutions have become the world’s most aggressive accumulators of wealth, hoarding mountains of cash, gold, and real estate that dwarf the reserves of sovereign nations. While global rankings may not exist, there is no debate: India stands uncontested at the absolute peak of religious turnout, drawing billions to its melas, festivals, and pilgrim centres, and leading the world in the sheer volume of wealth surrendered at these holy places.

But this overflowing piety has not engineered a more honest, compassionate, or just society. In that transaction, we have made devotion richer and dharma poorer.

On the other extreme, our holiest spaces have been degraded into the newest frontiers of brazen theft and institutional fraud. The very boards legally chartered to protect the faith are seeing their top officials arrested for asset misappropriation. Ongoing investigations strip away any remaining illusions: systemic corruption has breached the inner sanctum. It is corruption executed ruthlessly “in God’s name.”

In 2025 Corruption Perception Index, India stands at 91 out of 182 countries, with a score of 39 on a scale where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean, below the global average of 42.

Transparency International’s survey only makes the mirror clearer — India had the highest bribery rate in all of Asia.

This is not about an international list. This is about our daily life. It is the file that does not move without money. The hospital bed that needs a push. The temple hundi that needs auditing. The common man who must pay to get what is already his right.

This is not an embarrassment to be managed. It is an indictment to be answered. It demands more than outrage — it demands institutional reform, and a collective refusal to treat corruption as normal.

Ultimately, corruption is not merely a legal problem. It is a question of values. Laws, vigilance agencies and courts are indispensable, but they cannot by themselves create an honest society. The deeper contest concerns values formed at home, nurtured by religion, reinforced in educational institutions and tested at work. Ethics, morality, public good, accountability should be given priority over, money, possessions, publicity and power.

We live in a world that often treats wealth as paramount while overlooking how it is acquired. Society’s admiration for the wealthy can encourage people to pursue money by any means, helping this social evil to thrive.

Values are caught and not taught.

Children observe what adults do. Students notice what institutions tolerate. Employees learn from what senior colleagues reward. Communities reveal their values through what they admire.

Family members are often the first to notice disproportionate wealth, raising an uncomfortable question: do they challenge it—or enjoy and admire it?

Perhaps the most uncomfortable lesson from a corruption case is that society cannot always place itself outside the problem.

We participate in the culture of corruption when we seek an unfair shortcut, offer money to escape a legitimate rule, remain silent because corruption benefits us, or admire unexplained wealth without asking how it was created.

That does not make every citizen equally responsible. But a culture survives through countless individual choices.

The conviction of a former DGP should therefore be more than a story about one powerful individual facing punishment. It should be an occasion for institutional reflection and personal self-examination.

The appropriate response to corruption is neither sentimental denial nor triumphant condemnation. It is accountability followed by reflection.

There is a Biblical injunction: “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.”

Perhaps the more meaningful question is not who deserves the stone, but: What must we change so that no stone need to be thrown at all?

A corruption case may end in a courtroom.

Ultimately, the grand battle for a just society is won or lost in the quietest, smallest spaces.

We cannot clean the community or the state until we first purge the sanctum of the home.