A former South African Police Services (SAPS) administrative clerk, Vasvanthan Govender, was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for corruption by the Johannesburg Specialised Commercial Crimes Court.
He was charged with corrupt activities relating to public officers and defeating the administration of justice and sentenced to eight and three years respectively. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently, resulting in eight years of direct imprisonment. His duties included amongst others, the updating of dockets on the SAPS Cas system, ensuring that dockets are allocated to and from other units and ensuring that all new case dockets are assigned to investigating officers and fingerprints are forwarded to LCRC.
By his responsibilities, he had access to dockets appearing in court. On 30 March 2022, he solicited and received a bribe of R3500 from an accused, Soondaram Naidoo who was charged with culpable homicide wherein a nine-year-old child was accidentally killed. He promised Naidoo that the docket was destroyed to abort prosecution.
The accused reported the matter to the authorities and Govender was arrested. He accepted a bribe in secret to pervert the course of justice and caused the culpable homicide case against Naidoo to be withdrawn. Senior State Advocate Frans Mhlongo argued that the position held by the accused was indicative of the trust placed upon him by his erstwhile employer, the community and his colleagues and he succumbed to temptation and perpetrated a crime against the administration of justice. The abuse of trust at the scale on which it happened is seriously aggravating.
He failed to uphold and promote the good name, dignity, and esteem of the office of the SAPS and the administration of justice.The NPA and SAPS remain steadfast in their mission to uphold the law and will continue to prosecute public officials for corruption as they undermine Government efforts in their resolute action to rid the system of corruption.
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