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N. Damodaran v. State Rep. by the Inspector of Police

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 751Decided 24 Jul 2026
Criminal Appeal No. 3427 of 2026 (@ Special Leave Petition (Crl.) No. 11930 of 2024)
Justice J.B. Pardiwala · Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Background

The appellant, a Junior Engineer with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board in Coimbatore, was convicted of demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs. 10,000 from a contractor who had applied for an electricity service connection on his wife's behalf, over and above the legitimate deposit required. He was caught in a trap laid by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Wing after the contractor complained, and was convicted by the trial court and sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment, a sentence upheld by the High Court. The Supreme Court had earlier granted him only limited leave to appeal, restricted to the question of how severe the sentence should be.

Decision Breakdown

The Court examined the evidence: testimony from the complainant, an accompanying witness, an independent witness, and the trap officer, along with the positive chemical test on the appellant's hands and pocket, and found the conviction fully justified, rejecting the appellant's defence that the complaint was motivated by a personal grudge. However, it noted that at the time the offence was committed, the law prescribed lower minimum sentences (six months for one provision, one year for the other) than what was later applied, and reduced his sentence to those statutory minimums while leaving the fine and default sentence unchanged.

Lesson Learnt

Even where a corruption conviction is fully justified on the evidence, a person must be sentenced according to the punishment that the law actually prescribed at the time the offence was committed, not any harsher punishment introduced by a later amendment.

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

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