Two accomplices propping each other up is not corroboration, and a diary put the officer on a train

Justices Dipankar Datta and Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh acquitted a Railway Protection Force officer in both CBI prosecutions, holding approver evidence needed corroboration from someone outside the transaction.

A Divisional Security Commissioner of the Railway Protection Force at Palakkad was convicted in 2016 of taking bribes from his own personnel for transfers and postings, and the Kerala High Court affirmed the convictions in 2024. On 16 September 2026 the Supreme Court set both convictions aside and acquitted him outright. The reasoning turned on two things the prosecution never dealt with: the corroboration it offered for its approver came from the very person who had allegedly paid the bribe, and the officer's own monthly diary showed him away from Palakkad by train on the only date the record ever attached to the transaction.

One FIR, several prosecutions

The investigation began with an FIR registered on 4 August 2005 by the Anti-Corruption Branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation at Kochi. The allegation was that the appellant, while serving as Divisional Security Commissioner at Palakkad, had abused his position by demanding and obtaining illegal gratification through subordinate officials acting as intermediaries, from Railway Protection Force personnel seeking transfers, postings and other service benefits. The investigation produced multiple final reports and several prosecutions founded on distinct alleged transactions.

Two of them reached the Supreme Court. In C.C. No. 2 of 2014, concerning the complaint of P.P. Nandakumar, a Junior Clerk in the Personnel Branch, the Special Judge at Ernakulam convicted the appellant on 31 May 2016 under Section 7 and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and sentenced him to two years' rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 1,00,000. In C.C. No. 3 of 2015, concerning three further transactions, he was convicted under Section 7 and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(a), with sentences of one year each on two of the Section 7 counts and two years on the Section 13(2) count, all running concurrently.

The Kerala High Court affirmed both on 24 May 2024, although in one of the appeals only the conviction relating to the transaction with N.P. Gopi Kumar survived. Because both appeals came from the same FIR and the same investigation, shared witnesses including approvers, and raised the same questions about proof of demand and acceptance through intermediaries, the Supreme Court heard them together.

What independent corroboration means

The prosecution's case on the surviving transaction rested on two witnesses. One was a pardoned co-accused, the investigating officer's associate who had turned approver. The other was the alleged bribe giver. Each supported the other on the very transaction in which both had been active participants.

The Court held that this is not independent corroboration in the sense the rule of prudence requires for accomplice evidence. What that rule asks for is corroboration by an observer who is not connected with the transaction and is not part of it — it is the absence of any stake that gives the corroboration its independent character. Two participants vouching for each other adds volume, not independence.

The diary the prosecution never explained

The second strand was documentary and came from the defence. The appellant's own monthly diary, exhibited as Ext.D2, records that he left Palakkad by train on the evening of 29 July 2005 and did not return until the night of 31 July 2005. The only date attributed to the transaction anywhere on the record is 30 July 2005, which appears in the approver's statement recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It falls squarely inside the window in which the diary places the appellant elsewhere.

Neither the approver nor the alleged bribe giver gave any date for the meeting in their substantive testimony before the trial court. The prosecution offered no explanation reconciling the diary entry with its own case. The Court treated that silence as significant rather than incidental.

There was also nothing physical to fall back on. Unlike the other transaction in the case, this was never a trap. No currency was recovered, tested or produced at any stage. No part of the Rs 3,000 said to have changed hands, and nothing traceable to it, was ever recovered from the appellant, his residence or his office.

Why the statutory presumption never arose

Section 20 of the Prevention of Corruption Act allows a presumption to be drawn once certain foundational facts are proved. Applying Neeraj Dutta, the Court held those foundational facts had not been established by evidence of the quality the provision contemplates. Once the approver's status was accounted for and the diary entry was weighed against the only date on record, what remained was the uncorroborated word of two interested witnesses about an event unsupported by any recovery, documentary record or independent witness, and contradicted on that one date by the appellant's own contemporaneous diary.

On that footing the Court held that the charge could not be said to have been proved with the definitiveness that proof beyond reasonable doubt demands.

Two contentions left undecided

In his additional statement under Section 313 of the Code, the appellant had attributed the prosecution to a conspiracy. His case was that an Inspector of the Railway Protection Force, said to be close to the investigating officer and on good terms with the complainant, had worked against him in order to secure the Palakkad post, and was in fact posted there after the appellant was shifted out because of this case. Having reached its conclusions on the evidence, the Court said it was unnecessary to examine that contention and refrained from doing so. For the same reason it did not take up the appellant's challenge to the validity of the sanction to prosecute him.

Order

Both criminal appeals were allowed. The appellant was acquitted of all charges in the prosecution arising out of C.C. No. 2 of 2014 and of all charges in the prosecution arising out of C.C. No. 3 of 2015. The bail bonds furnished pursuant to this Court's order of 22 November 2024 in both appeals stand discharged, and any fine amount deposited by the appellant is to be refunded to him.