Supreme Court acquits Patwari: bribery conviction needs proof of both demand and acceptance

The Supreme Court set aside the conviction of Jaswinder Singh, a Patwari, under Sections 7 and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, for allegedly demanding and accepting Rs. 9,500 as a bribe for mutating a property. Convicted by the Special Judge, Hoshiarpur, in 2004 and affirmed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2013, Singh died while his appeal was pending, and his legal representatives were substituted to continue it. The prosecution's case rested on recovery of marked currency notes from the appellant's shirt pocket during a raid.

However, the Court found that the two members of the raiding party present at the scene, examined as prosecution witnesses, categorically stated that they did not see the informant hand over the money to the appellant, nor did they witness any demand or acceptance of the bribe. Applying its earlier decisions in B. Satyanarayana Murthy, Neeraj Dutta and Aman Bhatia, the Court reiterated that a conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act cannot rest on the bare recovery of money; both a demand for illegal gratification and its voluntary acceptance by the accused must be proved. Since neither was established here, the conviction and sentence were set aside and Singh's legal representatives were entitled to have him cleared of the charges.