MP High Court acquits Bargi constable 21 years after Rs 1,000 bribe conviction over notes found on the ground
Justice Sanjeev S. Kalgaonkar held that a complainant who blamed the demand on the station house officer in one breath and the constable in the next, a six-day delay, no shadow witness and notes the accused was made to pick up left the Lokayukta trap case short of proof.
A police constable convicted in January 2005 of taking a Rs 1,000 bribe at a paan shop near the Bargi bus stand in Jabalpur has been acquitted by the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which found that the ten phenolphthalein-coated notes were recovered from the ground rather than from his hands, that he had been made to pick some of them up before his fingers were dipped in the solution that turned pink, and that the complainant could not keep his story straight about who demanded the money in the first place.
Justice Sanjeev S. Kalgaonkar, sitting singly at the principal seat in Jabalpur, allowed Tawal Singh's appeal under Section 374(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure on 23 October 2026, more than two decades after it was filed. The judgment is a close reading of a 2001 Lokayukta trap against the standards the Supreme Court's Constitution Bench set in Neeraj Dutta v. State (NCT of Delhi).
A liquor arrest, a complaint and a trap
Tawal Singh was a constable at Police Station Bargi. On 2 June 2001 he, the station house officer C.R. Patel and other constables arrested one Bedilal for possessing illicit liquor. Bedilal was released after his father executed a surety bond.
Bedilal's relative Halke Verman then complained in writing to the Superintendent of Police, Special Police Establishment, Lokayukta, that the constable had demanded Rs 3,000 to release Bedilal, that he had paid Rs 1,000, and that the constable was now demanding another Rs 1,000 under threat of implicating two other relatives, Badda and Bhura, in the liquor case. Inspector M.L. Verma registered a first information report. Two panch witnesses, Rajendra and Prakash Mudliar, verified the complaint with Halke, who produced ten Rs 100 notes. Their numbers were noted, the panchas initialled them, and the notes were coated with phenolphthalein powder. A preliminary panchnama was drawn up.
Halke led the trap team to the police station. According to the prosecution, the constable came out, took him to a paan shop at the bus stand and received the notes; Halke signalled; constables Ramanandan and Sant Kumar Banjara caught hold of the accused, who threw the notes on the ground. Panch witness Prakash picked them up and checked the numbers. The constable's fingers were dipped in sodium bicarbonate solution, which turned pink, and the Forensic Science Laboratory later reported traces of phenolphthalein. After sanction, the First Additional Sessions Judge and Special Judge (Lokayukta), Jabalpur, tried him in Special Case No. 14 of 2002 and on 12 January 2005 convicted him under Section 7 and Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The sentence was one year's rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 500 on the first count and two years with a fine of Rs 1,000 on the second, to run concurrently.
What the two sides argued
Sankalp Kochar, for the appellant, argued that the prosecution had not proved demand beyond reasonable doubt. The complainant bore a grudge because the accused and the SHO had arrested his brother. A constable had no power to release anyone on bail. The money was recovered from the ground, and the defence had shown the probability that the complainant tried to thrust the notes into the accused's pocket, that they fell, and that the accused was then compelled to pick them up, which explained the phenolphthalein. Nobody in the trap team, including the leading officer, saw the notes change hands. Bedilal did not support the prosecution; Bedilal's father Bhaddi, Badda and Bhura were never examined. The complainant himself had said it was the SHO who demanded the money, yet the SHO was never made an accused. The paan shop owner, the only independent eyewitness, did not support the case. Counsel relied on a long line of authority, including State by Lokayuktha Police v. C.B. Nagaraj, Madan Lal v. State of Rajasthan, P. Satyanarayana Murthy, N. Vijayakumar v. State of Tamil Nadu and Mir Mustafa Ali Hashmi v. State of A.P.
Abhinav Shrivastava, for the State, said demand stood proved by Halke's evidence and the complaint verified before the panch witnesses, that the notes were thrown down by the accused after he was caught, and that the trial court had dealt with every inconsistency. Relying on a division bench ruling in Gopal Shivhare v. State of M.P., he argued that whether the accused could actually grant the favour was beside the point; what mattered was whether he induced the bribe-giver by demanding money. He relied on Neeraj Dutta.
The law the court applied
The judge set out the unamended ingredients of Sections 7 and 13(1)(d): a public servant who accepts or obtains gratification other than legal remuneration as a motive or reward for an official act, and a public servant who obtains a valuable thing or pecuniary advantage by corrupt or illegal means or by abusing his position. He traced the distinction between acceptance and obtainment through C.K. Damodaran Nair and Subash Parbat Sonvane, and the rule from C.P. Rao, B. Jayaraj and P. Satyanarayana Murthy that recovery alone, without proof of demand, does not establish either offence and does not trigger the presumption under Section 20. On the other side he placed Hazari Lal, N. Narsinga Rao and Kishan Chand Mangal, where surrounding circumstances were enough to presume that money found on an accused was received willingly.
Neeraj Dutta reconciled those lines. The judge quoted its conclusions: demand and acceptance must be proved as facts in issue; they may be proved by direct or circumstantial evidence; mere receipt without more is no offence; a presumption of fact may be drawn only once foundational facts are proved; where the complainant turns hostile or is unavailable, other evidence may carry the case; and Section 20's legal presumption, which arises on proof of the facts in issue under Section 7, does not apply to Section 13(1)(d). Because the case against the constable rested on inference, the judge also applied the five conditions for circumstantial proof from Sharad Birdhichand Sarda, tempered by Mohd. Yakub's reminder that the Evidence Act asks for the proof a prudent person would act on, not perfect proof.
A complainant with a grudge and two versions
The judge began with the complainant's position in a trap case. He is the victim rather than an accomplice, but he is an interested witness concerned with the trap's success and his evidence needs the caution given to any interested witness, though not a rule of automatic corroboration; the court cited the Supreme Court's recent CBI v. Baljeet Singh for the point that raiding-party officials and the complainant are not to be discounted merely for taking part.
Halke's evidence did not survive that scrutiny. In cross-examination he admitted that his brother Bedilal makes and sells illicit liquor, that he was annoyed when the Bargi police arrested him and had thought of teaching the police a lesson, that another brother works with a DSP named Pateriya, and that he put his thumb impression on the complaint at Pateriya's office at his instance without knowing its contents. A daily-wage labourer earning about Rs 25 a day, he had nonetheless put up Rs 1,000 for the trap. In chief he said the constable demanded Rs 2,000 at the police station the day after the arrest; in paragraph 18 he attributed the demand to the SHO and said he paid the constable on the SHO's instructions, without ever complaining against the SHO. The complaint was lodged six days after the alleged demand, with no explanation, which the judge said raised the possibility of premeditated implication after consultation at the Lokayukta office. Applying Vadivelu Thevar, he placed Halke in the category of witnesses neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable, for whom corroboration is imperative.
There was none. Bedilal denied witnessing any demand or payment, resiled from his police statement and said his father had told him the money was paid, which is hearsay. Bhaddi, Badda and Bhura were not examined. No shadow witness accompanied Halke, and the FIR was registered without any prior verification of the demand, a lapse the judge measured against Mir Mustafa Ali Hashmi, Meena Hemke and Mukut Bihari. The verification of the complaint by the panch witnesses showed only that Halke repeated his allegations to them; it was not independent proof of demand. The court held that demand had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Notes on the ground, and hands dipped afterwards
On acceptance, the court found the recovery evidence equally unsafe. Halke himself gave two accounts: that the constable counted the notes and threw them down when caught, and, at paragraph 27, that the constable picked the notes up from the ground at the direction of the Lokayukta officials. Panch witness Rajendra Prasad said that when he reached the paan shop two constables were already holding the accused's hands, the notes were lying near his feet, Prakash picked up some and the accused was made to pick up the rest; he repeated this later in his evidence. Prakash Mudliar, cross-examined the day after his chief examination was deferred so the notes could be requisitioned, said the accused picked up two notes and only then were his hands dipped in the solution.
The trial court had discarded that part of the panchas' evidence as an improvement, relying on Khujji v. State of M.P.. The judge found this an apparent error. Both witnesses volunteered the fact, one in chief and one in cross, and the prosecution never confronted either with a prior inconsistent statement. The trial court's finding, he said, was “based on conjecture and surmise rather than proper appreciation of evidence on record”. Since the notes were not recovered from the accused's person or exclusive possession, and he had handled them before the test, the pink solution had a plausible innocent explanation.
Nobody reliable saw the handover. The two panchas neither overheard the conversation nor saw the notes pass. Inspector M.L. Verma admitted the same. The paan shop owner, Bunty alias Alok, said only that the constable was talking to someone when four or five people approached and a scuffle followed. Constables Sant Kumar Banjara and Ramanand, the first to reach the spot and the men who physically apprehended the accused, were never examined, leaving what the judge called a material gap. The trap-laying officer, N.K. Agrawal, tried to fill it by claiming he overheard the accused use the word la, meaning bring, and saw him count the notes. The judge treated this as an improvement inconsistent with Halke's own account: by Agrawal's own evidence he was standing in the bus stand's passenger waiting hall with Inspector Verma, the panchas two or three feet from them, and reached the spot after the two constables, so those nearer could not see or hear what he, from further away, claimed to have seen and heard.
Two further points told in the accused's favour. The panchas said he protested at the scene that he was being falsely implicated and argued with the Lokayukta officials; the judge found that “the contemporaneous conduct corroborates the defence version”. And the trial court, at paragraph 62, had disbelieved Inspector C.R. Patel's evidence on the theory that Patel had demanded the bribe through his subordinate and so prepared documents to support him, while ignoring that Patel was never prosecuted for demanding, obtaining or abetting anything.
Section 20 cannot supply the missing demand
The judge held that the statutory presumption under Section 20 arises only after demand and acceptance are proved as foundational facts. “It cannot be used to fill in evidentiary gap on demand itself.” Once those facts are proved the accused's explanation is tested on preponderance of probability, but not before, a sequence he drew from Madan Mohan Lal Verma, Rajesh Gupta and Madan Lal. Here the foundational facts were missing: the notes came from the ground, the accused had been made to handle them before the test, the complainant was inconsistent about who demanded and how the money passed, the complaint was six days late, the complainant admitted his anger with the Bargi police, and no reliable independent witness saw the notes handed over or accepted. The circumstances did not form a complete chain and did not exclude the defence version.
Order
The appeal was allowed. The judgment of conviction and order of sentence of 12 January 2005 in Special Case No. 14 of 2002 were set aside and Tawal Singh was acquitted of the offences under Sections 7 and 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. His personal and surety bonds were discharged, the fine he deposited is to be refunded in accordance with law, and he was ordered to be set at liberty forthwith. The trial court's order on disposal of property was affirmed, and the record was directed to be sent back with a copy of the judgment.