Bribe case built on an unseized phone recording collapses; Madhya Pradesh HC acquits Alirajpur ASI
Justice Alok Awasthi at Indore set aside a two-year sentence under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, holding that a complainant who already faced police action, a memory card with no Section 65B certificate and notes found under an open register did not prove demand or acceptance. The Lokayukt plea for leave to appeal the partial acquittal was dismissed.
A Lokayukt trap at Ambua police station in Alirajpur district on 29 February 2016 ended with ₹10,000 in treated currency notes recovered from under a register on an Assistant Sub-Inspector's table and a positive hand-wash. Eight years later it has ended with an acquittal. The Madhya Pradesh High Court at Indore on 23 October 2026 set aside ASI Bharat Bairagi's conviction under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, finding that the only evidence of a demand was a phone recording the trial court could not play, made on a device nobody seized, by a complainant who had his own reasons to want the officer in trouble. Justice Alok Awasthi also refused the Special Police Establishment, Lokayukt, leave to appeal against Bairagi's acquittal on the companion charge under Section 13(1)(d).
A village quarrel, a summons to the police station and ₹10,000
The complainant, Dalsingh Baghel, told the Lokayukt office at Indore that a social gathering, an Ujwan Nukta programme, was under way in his village on 16 February 2016. At about 3.30 in the morning a verbal altercation broke out between his side and one Ritesh, son of Remsingh Bhilala. Ritesh lodged a complaint at Ambua police station.
According to the complaint, ASI Bairagi summoned Baghel to the station on 24 February 2016. Baghel went with his wife. He said the officer told him a criminal case would be registered against him unless he paid ₹20,000, took ₹5,000 from him there and then under pressure, and told him to bring the rest the next day. On 25 February at about 9 a.m. he returned, and the officer allegedly took another ₹2,000 and told him to arrange ₹10,000 to settle the complaint, giving him his mobile numbers to call when the money was ready. On 27 February Baghel called and asked for the amount to be reduced. The officer, he said, refused and told him to bring ₹10,000 on Monday, 29 February. Baghel recorded that call on the memory card of his mobile phone.
Unwilling to pay, he went to the Superintendent of Police, Special Police Establishment, Lokayukta, Indore, with a written complaint and the memory card. A trap team was formed, independent panch witnesses were requisitioned from Indore, and the pre-trap formalities were completed on 29 February.
The trap, the register and the hand-wash
The team reached Ambua police station the same day. Baghel went in with ₹10,000 in treated notes while the trap members waited nearby. On his signal they rushed in and caught the officer. Asked where the money was, Bairagi said it was under a register on his table. The notes were recovered from beneath the register. His hand-wash in sodium carbonate solution turned positive. The recovery, as the judgment records from the outset, was from an open table and not from the officer's person.
The Special Judge under the Prevention of Corruption Act at Alirajpur framed charges under Section 7 and Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2). The prosecution examined nine witnesses: Baghel (PW-1); Rajendra Kumar Mandloi, a Project Officer who acted as panch (PW-2); Constable Shivprakash Parasar (PW-3); Saidutt Ghohre, Nodal Officer (PW-4); Head Constable Pradeep Barve (PW-5); Dilipsingh Ahirwar of the M.P. Home Department (PW-6); Sub-Inspector Deepak Bhabhar (PW-7); Inspector S.P.S. Raghav, the investigating officer (PW-8); and Inspector Mahesh Sunnaiya (PW-9). The defence called Constable Bahadur Singh (DW-1) and exhibited two documents to show that the money had been forced on the accused.
What the Special Judge decided in December 2018
The trial court split the case down the middle. By its judgment of 10 December 2018 in Special Sessions Case No. 01/2017 it held that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused demanded ₹10,000 as illegal gratification, but had failed to prove that he actually received or accepted it. It convicted Bairagi under Section 7 and sentenced him to two years' rigorous imprisonment with a default stipulation, and acquitted him under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2).
Both sides appealed. Bairagi filed Criminal Appeal No. 9866 of 2018 under Section 374 of the CrPC, read with Section 415(3) of the BNSS. The Special Police Establishment, Lokayukt, through its officer-in-charge Shiv Singh Yadav, filed Misc. Criminal Case No. 17021 of 2019 under Section 378 of the CrPC seeking leave to appeal against the acquittal under Section 13(1)(d). Shri Alamgeer Khan appeared for Bairagi in both matters and Shri Prasanna Prasad for the State and the Lokayukt. The two were heard together on 15 October 2026 and decided by a common judgment.
No demand on the transcript, no phone in evidence
Bairagi's counsel argued that neither demand nor acceptance, the twin requirements for a conviction under the Act, had been proved. On acceptance, the notes were not found on the officer's person or in his clothing but under an open register on a table that any visitor or staff member could reach. On demand, the prosecution leaned on the call transcript and audio recording marked Exhibit P-7. A plain reading of it, he said, showed no explicit or unequivocal demand for a bribe; the conversation was about mutual village disputes, adjustments and the status of police papers. The investigating officer had admitted in paragraph 58 of his cross-examination that the transcript did not show the accused demanding ₹20,000 to hush up the case, nor that ₹5,000 or ₹2,000 had been taken earlier.
The electronic evidence, counsel said, was inadmissible in any event. The Lokayukta inspector never seized the mobile phone on which the recording was made, extracted no hash values, had the memory card subjected to no scientific authentication, and obtained no certificate under Section 65B of the Evidence Act from the complainant who created the file. The voice recorder given to Baghel for the trap itself recorded nothing, which Exhibit P-6 attributed to his panic and confusion. There was no voice spectrography and no independent voice identification. The alleged demands of 24 and 25 February were not supported by the station's daily diary entries, Exhibits D-1 and D-2, and the defence witness testified that Bairagi was away serving warrants. No shadow witness overheard or saw the trap transaction, leaving everything on the complainant's word.
The Lokayukt's answer
For the State and the Lokayukt, counsel pointed to the seizure memo, Exhibit P/14, recording the recovery of the tainted currency from beneath the register on the accused's office table at Badi Chowki. The complainant had supported both the demand and the delivery of the money there, in paragraphs 18 to 20 and 31 to 33 of the trial judgment. The panch witness Mandloi had corroborated hearing the recorded conversation, verifying the complaint and witnessing the recovery. On that footing the appeal should fail and the leave to appeal be granted, because the acquittal under Section 13(1)(d) was wrong.
Neeraj Dutta and what a trap case must prove
Justice Awasthi began with the Supreme Court's decision in Neeraj Dutta v. State (Government of NCT of Delhi), (2023) 4 SCC 731, quoting its summary at paragraph 88: proof of demand and acceptance of illegal gratification as a fact in issue is a sine qua non for guilt under Sections 7 and 13(1)(d); the prosecution must first prove the demand and then the acceptance, by direct or circumstantial evidence; and a court may presume demand and acceptance by inference only when the foundational facts have been proved. Read with P. Satyanarayana Murthy v. State of A.P., (2015) 10 SCC 152, and B. Jayaraj v. State of A.P., (2014) 13 SCC 55, this meant that mere recovery of currency notes, divorced from unimpeachable proof of a voluntary demand and acceptance, cannot sustain a conviction.
The question he framed was whether the trial court's finding, that the prosecution had proved demand but not acceptance, could stand. His answer went further than the trial court: the demand was not proved either.
A complainant who already faced action, and a recording nobody could play
The entire case, the judge found, rested on the complainant. No independent witness supported the alleged initial demand and no shadow witness was associated with it. The record showed that proceedings under Sections 107 and 116 of the CrPC had already been initiated against Baghel before the trap. Official action against him was complete; no work of his was pending with the ASI. That made him an interested witness with a motive to implicate the officer, and the judgment asked why a man would pay a bribe to influence proceedings that had already been initiated.
The complainant's own account of why he went to the Lokayukt did not help him. He acknowledged that a compromise had been reached with Ritesh, and that he filed the complaint out of resentment that the police had facilitated his paying ₹10,000 to Ritesh. The transcript itself had the accused saying, “I don't want anything, we will pay him the money”. The trial court's own findings, at paragraphs 21, 23, 29, 32 and 42, were that the whole conversation concerned payment of the amount to Ritesh, that an attempt was made to call Ritesh to receive it, and that he was out of station.
The recording fared no better than its maker. Neither the accused nor the complainant gave a voice sample. Baghel had prior experience of making recordings, yet did not use the voice recorder the Lokayukta office gave him, which the judge took as an attempt to conceal the actual conversation and a ground for an adverse inference under Section 114(g) of the Evidence Act. The recording had been played and heard on the complainant's own phone, which was never seized. When the memory card was put to the trial court an error occurred and the court could not hear it; the court then listened to a CD, on which the complainant had made no recording. The prosecution never clarified whether the memory card was in the phone when the call was recorded. If it was, the judge reasoned, it should have carried other, unrelated recordings, and the absence of any suggested editing; if the file was transferred from the phone's internal memory, a Section 65B certificate was mandatory and none existed. He relied on Anvar P.V. v. P.K. Basheer, (2014) 10 SCC 473, Ram Singh v. Col. Ram Singh, (1985) Supp SCC 611, and the coordinate bench in Sudeep v. State of M.P., Cr.A. No. 1013/2016 decided on 8 July 2024. No voice examination was done and nobody familiar with the accused's voice identified it.
The investigating officer's cross-examination at paragraph 58, which the judgment reproduces in Hindi, was treated as a fatal blow to the case on demand: he conceded that the transcript contained no statement that ₹20,000 had to be paid to suppress the case, nothing about ₹5,000 having been handed over by the complainant's wife and one Patel, and nothing in terms about ₹10,000 being asked for.
Other loose ends compounded the doubt. The complaint application was typed in the Lokayukta office on 28 February 2016, yet the Superintendent of Police had already issued a letter summoning the panch witnesses on 27 February. The chemical evidence, Articles D1, D2 and D3, was destroyed before it reached the court, and the prosecution offered no explanation. The Additional Secretary who granted sanction for prosecution did not testify, leaving it unclear whether she had applied her own mind.
Why the recovery could not carry the case alone
On acceptance, the judge agreed with the trial court. The notes came from under an open register, not from the officer's person. No independent shadow witness overheard the conversation or watched the transaction. That left the prosecution, in the judgment's words, “resting on weak, uncorroborated legs”, within the mischief described in Mukhtiar Singh v. State of Punjab, (2017) 8 SCC 136, and Suraj Mal v. State (Delhi Administration), (1979) 4 SCC 725.
Taking the evidence as a whole, the court found the prosecution case suffered from “insurmountable structural defects”. The foundation of a Section 7 offence, a clear and unambiguous demand, was unestablished. The sole reliance on Exhibit P-7 was nullified by the investigating officer's admission and by the complainant's own cross-examination at paragraphs 22 to 27, and the electronic record failed the admissibility thresholds in Anvar and Ram Singh given the unseized phone and the blank trap recording. The appellant had therefore rebutted the statutory presumption under Section 20 of the Act.
Having concluded that proof of a prior demand was wholly absent, the judge turned to the Lokayukt's application for leave to appeal the acquittal under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2). The Special Judge, he held, had correctly evaluated that evidence: no physical acceptance was shown, the recovery was from a place accessible to anyone in the office, and no shadow witness saw the transaction. Applying Chandrappa v. State of Karnataka, (2007) 4 SCC 415, and Murali v. State, (2021) 1 SCC 726, where two reasonable views are possible on the evidence an appellate court does not disturb an acquittal merely because another view might be taken. There was no perversity, illegality or misreading of evidence, and the acquittal on the Section 13 charge was affirmed.
Order
Criminal Appeal No. 9866 of 2018 was allowed. The judgment of 10 December 2018 in Special Sessions Case No. 01/2017 convicting Bharat Bairagi under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act was set aside and he was acquitted of that charge. His bail bonds stand discharged and any fine deposited is to be refunded according to the rules. Misc. Criminal Case No. 17021 of 2019, the Special Police Establishment, Lokayukt's application for leave to appeal against the acquittal under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2), was dismissed as devoid of merit. A copy of the judgment was directed to the trial court for compliance and another to be placed on the record of the Lokayukt's application. Pending interlocutory applications were closed. The matters were heard on 15 October 2026 and pronounced on 23 October 2026.