InsightsIAS Ethics 70 Days Plan
Day 6
1) You are newly appointed as Deputy Commissioner in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. Your son is suffering from rare genetic disease which requires at least rupees ten lakhs every months for medical treatment. You have sold your wife’s gold and your house to treat your son. You have taken huge personal loans from friends and relatives too. Doctors have assured that if the treatment continues for another two years, your son will completely recover and become normal. If treatment stops, your son dies. Recently sleuths in your department caught red handed smugglers who were smuggling rare species of turtles to China.
Upon enquiry it is known that with the aid of forest officials, they had collected hundreds of turtles and were about to send them to top restaurants in China where these turtles were to be consumed. You are in charge of investigation and it’s your first assignment. You come to know that this smuggling business is worth many crores. One of the smuggler offers you two crores to let them go free. Two inspectors and a superintendent who are working under you try to convince you that letting go such smugglers by taking bribe is common in the department unless they are high profile criminals. They tell you that nothing would happen to you if you take bribe and let criminals go. Looking at the personal problems you are facing, they say that allowing few hundred turtles become food for Chinese is not a big crime to commit.
a) Identify the issues involved in the case.
b) In this situation, what are the options available to you? Evaluate their merits and demerits.
c) If take bribe to save your son’s life at the cost of lives of turtles, will it be ethical? Comment. (25)
