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Chaitanya Prakash Audichya v. CBI

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 697 of 2011)Decided 1 Jul 2015
Criminal Appeal No. 697 of 2011
Justice A.K. Sikri · Justice Uday Umesh Lalit

Background

The appellant, an Assistant Labour Commissioner in Goa, was accused of demanding Rs.30,000 as a bribe from a contractor (PW1) in exchange for processing a mandatory labour licence his firm needed for government contracts. When the contractor reported this to the CBI, a trap was laid: marked currency notes were handed to the appellant at his residence that same night, and a subsequent chemical test confirmed he had handled the tainted money. The trial court convicted him under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Bombay High Court (Goa Bench) upheld the conviction on appeal, leading to this further appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the appellant's arguments, that the police requisitioned trap witnesses before formally registering the FIR, that no specific time/place for the bribe was mentioned in the original complaint, and that the raid was conducted without a preliminary inquiry, and found none of these persuasive given the surrounding facts (the demand had to be met that very evening, leaving no time for standard preliminary steps). The consistent testimony of the complainant and an independent panch witness, combined with the appellant's own shifting explanations (first blaming the complainant for forcing money into his pocket, and later testifying something materially different at trial), satisfied the Court that demand and acceptance of the bribe were fully established, triggering the statutory presumption of guilt under Section 20 of the Act which the appellant failed to rebut.

Lesson Learnt

In bribery prosecutions, once the prosecution proves that tainted money passed to a public servant through a credible trap and consistent witness testimony, the accused's inconsistent or shifting defence versions will tend to work strongly against him: procedural quibbles about the exact sequence of police paperwork rarely overturn a well-evidenced bribery case.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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