Pune: Nearly three decades after a Pune court clerk was caught in an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) trap with Rs 500 in tainted currency notes, the Bombay High Court has demolished the prosecution’s case, ruling that the conviction was built on “assumptions, surmises and conjectures” rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt. In a significant judgment, the court held that mere recovery of tainted money cannot substitute proof of demand, the very foundation of a corruption case.
Allowing a Criminal Appeal filed in 2003, Justice N.J. Jamadar acquitted Shailendra Manikrao Bakare, a Bench Clerk formerly attached to a Pune Magistrate’s Court, overturning his conviction recorded by the Special Judge under Sections 7 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The High Court ordered a refund of the fine amount and discharged the accused from all criminal liability.
The prosecution had alleged that on September 26, 1997, complainant Dr. Hemant Chikhalikar was asked to pay Rs 500 to secure the issuance of a bailable warrant in a criminal defamation case pending before a Judicial Magistrate. Acting on the complaint, the ACB organized a trap. The tainted currency notes were allegedly recovered from the clerk’s shirt pocket, leading to his arrest, prosecution, and eventual conviction by the trial court in 2003.
What appeared to be a successful trap unraveled in the High Court. Justice Jamadar found that the prosecution’s own evidence destroyed its case. While the complainant claimed the bribe demand was made at 2:30 pm and that he immediately approached the ACB, the investigating officer admitted that the complainant had actually reached the ACB office between 10:00 and 10:30 am—hours before the alleged demand. Calling this contradiction fundamental, the court observed that if the complainant had already reached the ACB in the morning, the allegation that the demand was first made in the afternoon could not stand.
The High Court also found the prosecution’s version of the trap sequence—registering the complaint, summoning panch witnesses, verifying the complaint, completing pre-trap formalities, and dispatching the raiding team in less than two hours—to be highly improbable and stretching credibility.
Reiterating settled Supreme Court precedents, the judgment emphasized that proof of demand, voluntary acceptance, and recovery must form one complete chain before a public servant can be convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Suspicion, however strong, cannot replace legal proof.
The investigating officer admitted during cross-examination that there was no independent verification of the alleged demand before laying the trap. The High Court held that this omission was fatal. Furthermore, material inconsistencies between the complainant’s testimony and that of the panch witness regarding the conversation preceding the payment made the prosecution’s story unsafe to rely upon.
The accused maintained throughout that he never demanded or accepted any bribe, claiming instead that the complainant had suddenly thrust the currency notes into his shirt pocket. Significantly, the defence produced an independent eyewitness who testified to seeing the complainant push the notes into the clerk’s pocket while the latter was putting a case file back into the cupboard. The High Court found that this evidence remained unshaken during cross-examination and could not be casually discarded. Holding that the Special Judge had overlooked glaring contradictions and convicted the accused by drawing unwarranted inferences, Justice Jamadar observed, “The learned Special Judge committed a grave error in arriving at the finding of guilt on assumptions, surmises and conjectures sans legal evidence.”
