Veterinary surgeon must face disproportionate assets trial 21 years after ACB raid: Chhattisgarh High Court
Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas affirmed the charge under Section 13(1)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act against Dr Narayan Prasad Pandey, holding that claims that the properties belonged to relatives or were bought with GPF loans are defences for trial, and that a thirteen-year investigation delay does not quash a charge.
The Chhattisgarh High Court has refused to discharge Dr Narayan Prasad Pandey, an Assistant Veterinary Surgeon at Jagdalpur, from a disproportionate assets charge that traces back to an Anti-Corruption Bureau raid on his homes in May 2005. Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas, sitting as a single judge, dismissed his criminal revision on 27 October 2026, affirmed the charge framed by the Special Judge at Jagdalpur under Section 13(1)(e) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and vacated the stay that had held the trial since March 2020. Every point the surgeon raised, from the valuation of his properties to the thirteen years the Bureau took to file its charge sheet, was either a matter for trial or, on the record of his own litigation, no ground for interference.
Rs 57.84 lakh found in two houses
The prosecution case began with information received by the ACB that the applicant had, during his service, acquired movable and immovable property out of proportion to his known income. On verification the Bureau listed about 5 acres of agricultural land at Hanumana in Rewa district, a two-storied house, HIG-2/16, at Deendayal Upadhyay Nagar, Sector-3, Raipur, a two-storied house in Vrindavan Colony, Jagdalpur, said to stand in the name of his adopted son, several vehicles, agricultural land and a dairy farm of 0.46 hectare at village Karkapal, Jagdalpur, and cash, gold and silver ornaments, household articles and investments.
The Superintendent of Police, ACB, Raipur, held a preliminary enquiry on 2 May 2005, obtained a search warrant from the Special Judge at Jagdalpur on 3 May 2005, and searched both houses on 4 May 2005 in the presence of the applicant, his family and independent witnesses. At the Jagdalpur house the team found cash of Rs 8,97,090, about 688.6 grams of gold ornaments valued at Rs 4,86,355 and about 1,125 grams of silver valued at Rs 10,828; the movable and immovable property there was assessed at approximately Rs 56,44,401. At the Raipur house there was Rs 1,850 in cash and property assessed at about Rs 1,40,500. The combined figure was approximately Rs 57,84,901, which the Bureau treated as far above the surgeon's known income.
Crime No. 16 of 2005 was registered at the ACB police station in Raipur on 8 May 2005. The charge sheet came more than thirteen years later, on 29 November 2018, before the Special Judge under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Bastar at Jagdalpur, in Special Case No. 01 of 2018. On 30 November 2019 the Special Judge framed the charge. The applicant filed this revision, CRR No. 71 of 2020, under Sections 397 and 401 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and on 2 March 2020 the High Court stayed the proceedings. The matter was listed on 13 August 2026 for vacation of that stay; with the consent of both sides it was heard finally instead.
Inflated valuations, relatives' property and thirteen years of delay
Mr Kishore Bhaduri, Senior Advocate, with Mr Harsh Dave for the applicant, argued that the trial court had not looked at the whole charge sheet, which made out no case. The properties had been valued at inflated current figures rather than their worth at the time of acquisition. Several of them belonged to the applicant's relatives and had been bought from their own independent income, yet the investigating agency had folded their assets and income into his accounts. His income-tax returns and documents from statutory authorities had been ignored, and the final report prepared mechanically. The house, he said, was bought with a loan from his GPF account after due permission, the dairy farm was started in his wife's name, and every property was acquired after permission to or intimation of the authorities. The burden on a public servant to explain his assets, counsel submitted, does not relieve the prosecution of proving a prima facie case, and not on a mere preponderance of probabilities.
The sharpest point was delay. The raid was on 4 May 2005; the charge sheet was filed in November 2018, more than thirteen years later, without any plausible reason. That alone, counsel argued, justified quashing the FIR and the charge, as the Supreme Court and several High Courts had done in corruption cases. He cited CBI v. R. Bhuvaneswari, (2024) 1 HCC (Bom) 32, State of Himachal Pradesh v. Nishant Sareen, (2010) 14 SCC 527, State of Punjab v. Mohammed Iqbal Bhatti, (2009) 17 SCC 92, Sayyed Zarina Ali v. State of Madhya Pradesh, decided on 4 March 2024, S.K. Mittal v. CBI, decided by the Delhi High Court on 13 September 2007, Karambir Singh v. CBI, 2011 SCC OnLine Del 4586, Santosh De v. Archna Guha, 1994 Supp (3) SCC 735, and Mihir Kumar Ghosh v. State of West Bengal, 1988 SCC OnLine Cal 268.
Mr Sanjeev Pandey, Deputy Advocate General, replied that the search and investigation material disclosed a prima facie case of disproportionate assets, that the applicant's grounds were disputed questions of fact that could not be decided at the charge stage, and that delay is not an automatic ground for quashing. The case diary, he said, showed that the applicant had himself filed several petitions in the High Court about the investigation and sanction and had obtained interim protection, which was what had held up the investigation.
Defences belong to the trial, and corruption cases call for restraint
Justice Vyas held that the source of the applicant's income and the circumstances in which he acquired the assets were matters for evidence at trial. The claim that the income and assets came from legitimate sources might be a defence, but at the stage of framing charge the court could not accept the defence version and discard the prosecution material. Whether the assets were disproportionate to known sources was for the trial court on the record. The same went for the argument that relatives bought the properties from their own means; that too was a defence, and “this Court cannot conduct a fishing enquiry” into the reliability or genuineness of the allegations or the material collected.
The judge then turned to State of Chhattisgarh v. Aman Kumar Singh, (2023) 6 SCC 559, quoting paragraphs 80 to 83. There the Supreme Court said it would be desirable for High Courts to maintain a hands-off approach and not quash FIRs in corruption cases, especially at the investigation stage, even where some strong-arm tactics by the ruling dispensation might be discernible; the considerations that apply to quashing under general penal statutes may not apply to a Prevention of Corruption Act offence, the proper course is to let the investigation reach its conclusion, and interference should rest on the very special features of a case, such as a record showing no material at all to support even a reasonable suspicion of illicit enrichment. No such special feature, Justice Vyas found, existed here.
On the GPF loan, the permissions and the dairy farm in his wife's name, the court applied Manendra Prasad Tiwari v. Amit Kumar Tiwari, (2022) 20 SCC 757, where the Supreme Court held that a charge, once framed, should be quashed in revision only in exceptional cases and on rare occasions, that the trial must then proceed without unnecessary interference until the prosecution evidence is on record, and that at the charge stage the court asks only whether there is strong suspicion, not whether guilt is proved. He also relied on State of Orissa v. Pratima Behera, AIR 2025 SC 218, which reiterated through Minakshi Bala v. Sudhir Kumar that a revisional court cannot go beyond the documents referred to in Sections 239 and 240 of the Code, cannot usurp the trial court's function of deciding the merits, and that even a very strong suspicion founded on material is enough to frame a charge.
The delay was partly of the applicant's own making
The thirteen-year gap did not persuade the court. The record showed that the applicant had filed WPCR No. 582 of 2018 challenging the FIR and seeking a direction to the sanctioning authority to consider his explanation of the alleged disproportionate income. On 2 January 2019 the High Court ordered that no coercive step be taken against him while directing the authorities to go on with the investigation under the FIR of 8 May 2005. A Division Bench disposed of that petition on 11 May 2023 with liberty to seek quashing of the charge sheet before the competent court.
The record also showed a second corruption case. On 28 June 2019 the Special Judge (Anti-Corruption), South Bastar, Dantewada, convicted the applicant in Special Case No. 01 of 2015, sentencing him to three years with a fine of Rs 25,000 under Section 7A of the Act and five years with a fine of Rs 25,000 under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2). The High Court allowed his appeal, CRA No. 1043 of 2019, on 15 May 2026 and acquitted him on benefit of doubt. Because the applicant was in any event facing trial under the Act, the judge held, the delay he complained of was of no significance, and the submission that the charge was illegal for having been framed on a charge sheet filed thirteen years late was misconceived. S.K. Mittal, in which the Delhi High Court quashed a corruption FIR for delay in filing the charge sheet, was distinguished on the same facts: here the applicant had already been convicted once under the Act and acquitted on appeal, so the delay in completing the investigation was not fatal.
Order
Justice Vyas held that in a Prevention of Corruption Act case the principle of non-interference laid down in Aman Kumar Singh applies unless special features exist, and none did. The question in a revision against framing of charge is whether the prosecution material, taken at face value, discloses the ingredients of the offence and sufficient ground to proceed, not whether the prosecution will ultimately succeed beyond reasonable doubt. The material collected here could not be called so deficient or inherently improbable as to warrant interference. CRR No. 71 of 2020 was dismissed. The order of 30 November 2019 framing charges under Section 13(1)(e) read with Section 13(2) of the Act was affirmed and the interim order vacated. The court clarified that its observations are confined to the revision, will not prejudice either side at trial, and that the Special Judge is to decide the case strictly on the evidence led before it. The judgment was reserved on 13 August 2026 and is marked approved for reporting.