Chhattisgarh High Court Acquits Government Accountant in Bribery Case
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Delivering a major landmark verdict on anti-corruption jurisprudence, the Chhattisgarh High Court has ruled that the mere physical recovery of tainted currency notes from an accused person’s pocket is fundamentally insufficient to sustain a conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act unless the prosecution unequivocally establishes the prerequisite demand for illegal gratification beyond all reasonable doubt. Setting aside the March 2017 conviction order passed by the Surajpur Special Court, a single bench presided over by Justice Naresh Kumar Chandravanshi held on September 18 that the statutory bedrock of any corruption prosecution hinges on conclusively demonstrating both "demand and voluntary acceptance." Because the prosecution's foundational claims crumbled under cross-examination and the digital surveillance records failed mandatory forensic standards, the High Court ordered the complete acquittal and exoneration of an accountant formerly posted at the Surajpur District Education Officer (DEO) establishment.
Trap Crumbles in Trial: Complainant Admits No Bribe Demanded as Witness Reveals Forced Planting
The roots of the prosecution trace back to an alleged demand involving ₹15,000—subsequently negotiated down to ₹8,000—allegedly sought by the DEO accountant from the chairman of the Maa Saraswati Shiksha Samiti in exchange for clearing the official institutional recognition file of a school managed by the trust. Following a formal complaint registered with the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), sleuths orchestrated a sting trap at the Surajpur DEO office on June 30, 2014, where investigators reportedly caught the accountant red-handed with ₹8,000 in marked currency notes recovered from his trousers pocket, corroborated by phenolphthalein chemical swab tests. However, the trial proceedings took a dramatic turn when the complainant himself explicitly deposed under oath that the accountant had never demanded any money from him, while an independent witness corroborated that the complainant had forcibly pushed the currency notes into the government employee's pocket, leaving the prosecution entirely bereft of evidence to substantiate any voluntary transaction or prior solicitous demand.
Critical Lapses in Electronic Proof: Section 65-B Certificate Missing and No Voice Sampling Done
Compounding the collapse of direct witness testimony, the High Court exposed severe investigative negligence regarding the digital recordings submitted to establish telephonic bribery conversations. During court scrutiny, the investigating officer acknowledged that no mandatory statutory certificate under Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act had been obtained to authenticate the primary electronic audio recordings presented as evidence. Crucially, the investigating agency neither extracted formal voice spectrographic samples from the accused officer nor submitted the recorded conversations to an accredited central forensic science laboratory for acoustic verification, rendering the digital claims completely inadmissible. Citing these fatal evidentiary deficiencies and relying on settled legal principles, the High Court emphasized that without verifiable demand, physical possession of currency alone cannot infer guilt, overturning the trial court's judgment to grant unreserved relief to the appellant.
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