He had already handed over the cheque the night before the trap, so why was there still money to collect

A bribe for releasing a judo coach’s kit allowance, and a defence built on the sequence of events. The Delhi High Court finds the demand continued after the work was done, and upholds the conviction.

A trap case ordinarily has a simple shape: the official wants money to do something, the complainant goes to the agency, and the money changes hands under observation. The shape breaks when the official has already done the thing before the trap is sprung — because the obvious question is what he was still being paid for.

On 22 September 2026 Justice Vimal Kumar Yadav decided an appeal turning on exactly that anomaly, sixteen years after the conviction.

A kit allowance of ₹10,000

The appellant was an Assistant Sub Inspector (Ministerial) in the Sports Cell at CISF Headquarters, New Delhi. The complainant, an Inspector, had represented the Indian Junior Judo Team as coach at the 5th Asian Junior Judo Championship in Doha in 2004, and was entitled to a kit allowance of ₹10,000. The appellant was dealing with the processing of that claim.

The prosecution case was that he demanded ₹5,000 to release it, repeated the demand, met the complainant at his residence, and continued to insist on payment. The complainant went to the CBI. A trap was laid: the currency notes were treated with phenolphthalein powder, their particulars recorded in a handing-over memo, and the raid conducted.

The notes were recovered from the appellant’s possession, their serial numbers tallying with those in the handing-over memo. The hand wash and pocket wash tested positive, and the chemical examination reported the presence of phenolphthalein and sodium carbonate in the wash.

The Special Judge, CBI, Patiala House Courts convicted him on 20 April 2010 under Section 7 and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and sentenced him on 24 April 2010 to two years’ rigorous imprisonment with a fine on each count, the substantive sentences to run concurrently.

The cheque, and what it was said to prove

The defence rested on a single fact, and it was a real one. The cheque for the kit allowance had already been delivered by the appellant on 27 October 2004 — the evening before the raid.

If the complainant already had his money, the argument ran, there was nothing left for the appellant to grant or withhold, and no reason for a bribe. What passed at the trap must have been something else; and the recorded conversation relied on by the prosecution was merely two acquaintances discussing a private financial transaction.

The point was squarely placed before the trial court and expressly considered there. Its reasoning was that the complainant’s possession of the cheque did not prevent the appellant from continuing to demand money, and that the persistence of the demand explained why the complainant went to the CBI rather than simply letting the matter end.

On independent re-examination of the evidence, the High Court held that this conclusion did not warrant interference.

The chain, and the recording

The Court set out the sequence it found materially consistent: the complainant’s initial approach to the appellant, the demand of ₹5,000, its repetition, the meeting at his residence, the handing over of the cheque, the continuing insistence on money, the subsequent complaint, and his participation in the trap.

Variations in parts of his testimony did not warrant disbelieving him, the Court held, when his evidence was read with the other circumstances, which together created what the judgment calls an almost tangible chain of events.

The recorded conversation from the pre-raid verification did the corroborative work. Read in the context of the prior meetings, the alleged demand and the subsequent trap, it supplied contemporaneous corroboration of the monetary demand and the appellant’s insistence on payment — which is why the characterisation of it as acquaintances discussing a private transaction was rejected.

That is the answer to the anomaly, and it is worth stating as a proposition: the completion of the official act does not extinguish a demand made for doing it. An official who has released a payment and goes on pressing for his cut is still demanding gratification within Section 7, because the offence attaches to the demand and acceptance rather than to the leverage remaining at the moment of payment.

The statutory presumption

With demand, acceptance and recovery established, Section 20 of the Prevention of Corruption Act raised the presumption that the gratification was accepted as a motive or reward. The burden then lay on the appellant to rebut it.

Weighed against the complaint, the pre-trap proceedings, the recovery memos, the departmental records, the recovery witness, the recorded conversations and the scientific evidence, the Court found the material offered in rebuttal insufficient to displace it.

The Court summarised its own treatment of the difficulty: the delivery of the cheque before the complaint is a circumstance requiring careful scrutiny, but it does not destroy the prosecution’s case, because the complainant specifically attributes a continuing demand to the appellant after delivery of the cheque, and that assertion is supported by the contemporaneous verification proceedings and by the trap that followed.

The order

The conviction under Section 7 was upheld, and the conviction under Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(d) was held not to call for interference. The appeal was dismissed. The appellant was directed to surrender forthwith to undergo the sentence, with the benefit of set-off under Section 428 CrPC as already granted by the trial court. A copy of the judgment was directed to be sent to the trial court and the prison authorities.

The judgment does not break new ground, and it does not pretend to. Its value is in how it handles a fact that looked, on its face, like an answer to the charge. The Court did not brush the cheque aside; it identified what the defence needed the cheque to prove — that no demand could have survived the payment — and found that the evidence showed one had.