Observing that there is no “post-paid” concept under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act on “demand and acceptance” of bribe, the High Court of Karnataka quashed a corruption case registered against an in-charge sub-registrar by the erstwhile Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).
“Section 7 of the Act would clearly hint at a ‘pre-paid’ demand for performing a work and acceptance… The demand should be for any work to be performed and acceptance should be towards the said work,” the court observed.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition filed by H. Manjunath, a first division assistant of the Stamps and Registration Department, who was tasked with the duties of the in-charge sub-registrar of Hosadurga in Chitradurga district.
The ACB had registered the case in April this year against the petitioner for allegedly demanding ₹5,000 bribe and accepting ₹4,000 from the complainant for registering a mortgage deed.
No work pending
However, the court noticed that the deed was registered way back on February 24, 2022, and the certified copy of the registered deed was also released to the complainant on the same day. Strangely, the complaint of demand to do a favorable work of registering the deed was made to the ACB several days after the deed was registered.
The court also noted that the ACB, after providing specified currency notes to the petitioner, tried to catch the petitioner red-handed on March 2 but it failed as the petitioner was not in office. The second attempt to trap the petitioner was made on April 20 and the ACB found ₹4,000 on the office table of the petitioner. It was the complainant who had kept the amount on the petitioner’s table, and the latter was not caught red-handed accepting the amount, the court pointed out.
“If the complainant had complained that the petitioner had demanded money for the release of the document, that would have been a different circumstance altogether. But in the present case, no work of the complainant was pending before the petitioner when the complaint of demand was made,” the court said, while stating that continuation of the case against the petitioner would not only an abuse of process of law but also degenerate into harassment of the public servant
.