Bribe Recovery Alone Not Enough to Prove Guilt: High Court Acquits Mandal Convenor in Corruption Case

In an important decision, the Chhattisgarh High Court has acquitted the education department's divisional coordinator Lavan Singh Churendra in a corruption case. The court said that the mere recovery of the bribe amount is not enough to convict someone, unless it is proved that the accused had accepted the money voluntarily as a bribe. This decision was given by a single bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha.

Let us tell you that this case is of the year 2013, when Baijnath Netam, a teacher of a government primary school and the then superintendent of the tribal hostel, had alleged that the divisional coordinator had demanded a bribe of ₹ 10,000 from him in exchange for scholarship approval. He had given ₹ 2,000 in advance and said that he would pay the rest of the amount later. After this, he complained to the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) and the accused was also arrested during the trap.

But the investigation revealed that the complainant himself was under investigation on charges of scholarship scam. Mandal convenor Lavan Singh Churendra was the investigating officer and he had issued a recovery order confirming the embezzlement of ₹50,700 against the complainant. The court admitted that this complaint was motivated by the spirit of revenge.

The High Court also found that the scholarship for which the bribe was demanded had already been approved and the amount had also been withdrawn. Apart from this, the testimony of the witnesses involved in the trap party was not matching. No forensic investigation was conducted on the audio recording presented by the complainant and the voice present in it was also not confirmed.

The court, citing important cases of the Supreme Court like B. Jayaraj vs. Government of Andhra Pradesh and Neeraj Dutta vs. Government of Delhi, said that for conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act, it is necessary to prove a clear demand for bribe and its voluntary confession.

The court of Special Judge (Prevention of Corruption), Raipur, had sentenced Lavan Singh to two years in 2017, which has now been rejected by the High Court. The accused were already on bail. The court ordered that his bail will remain effective for six months, so that if the state government wants to appeal to the Supreme Court, it has enough time. With this decision, the accused has got justice after almost 12 years.