The Supreme Court has ruled that prior sanction is necessary to prosecute a public servant in criminal cases if they are discharging their official duties and if such clearance is not forthcoming or denied, the official cannot be prosecuted.

The ruling is likely to have far-reaching implications benefiting government employees.

A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma made the observation on Tuesday while quashing the criminal proceedings against Suneti Toteja, an officer of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), in a sexual harassment case in the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India.

“It is only to be seen if the accused public servant was acting in the performance of his/her official duties, and if the answer is in the affirmative, then prior sanction for their prosecution is a condition precedent to the cognisance of the cases against them by the courts,” the bench said.

In two earlier cases — Vineet Narain Vs Union of India (1998) and Subramanian Swamy Vs Dr Manmohan Singh (2012) — it was contended that if the government sanction for prosecution of a public servant as required under Section 197CrPC was not forthcoming within a period of three months from the date of the request, the accused official can be tried under the doctrine of “deemed sanction”.

However, the apex court on Tuesday clarified that no prosecution could be done in the absence of a valid sanction.

Allahabad High Court had refused to quash the criminal case against Toteja, aggrieved by which the BIS officer had filed the present appeal.

The Uttar Pradesh government and the complainant had opposed the plea on the ground that even without a sanctioning order, Toteja could be prosecuted in terms of the Vineet Narain and Subramanian Swamy judgments.

The apex court said: “The argument advanced by the respondent state and the complainant with respect to ‘deemed sanction’ is also not tenable. Section 197 of the CrPC does not envisage a concept of deemed sanction.

Section 197 of the CrPC deals with the prosecution of judges and public servants and prescribes that if a public servant is accused of any offence while acting in the discharge of his official duty, no court “shall take cognisance of such offence except with the previous sanction save as otherwise provided in the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013”.