The Supreme Court has issued a show-cause notice to a convict for misleading it by producing a wrong copy of a trial court’s verdict to get a favourable order which had allowed him to walk free on payment of a fine only in a graft case.

The top court, while issuing the notice to convict S Shankar, asked him why it should not recall the order sparing him the jail term and take “further suitable” action for the act of misleading it.

The SC, had on July 23, 2019, allowed Shankar to walk free in the corruption case on payment of Rs 1,000 after his lawyer argued that the Andhra Pradesh High Court “wrongly construed” the operative portion of the judgement of a trial court delivered in the year 2000.

It was argued the trial court had not awarded a jail term of one year to Shankar but had only imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 for offences of criminal breach of trust and conspiracy under the IPC and some other charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

“Since we find that the trial court had merely imposed a sentence of payment of fine of Rs 1,000 on the appellant, the judgment of the high court is clarified accordingly. In view of the above, the appeal stands disposed of, making it clear that no sentence of imprisonment was imposed on Accused No. 5 (Shankar) … by the trial court and the high court…,” the top court had ordered, granting the relief.

However, a subsequent inquiry and a report of the secretary general of the apex court indicated that prima facie, the convict “misled” the bench to avoid a jail term.