Brahm Dass, Patwari vs State of Punjab

I.S. Tiwana, J. (Oral)

The appellant assails his conviction under Section 161, Indian Penal Code, and section 5(1)(d) read with section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. What has been accepted against him by the trial Court is that on 14.1.1985 he received Rs. 100/ by way of illegal gratification from Banta Singh (PW 2) for supplying a copy of the Khasra Girdaweri (Exhibit P 14). This conviction is undisputably founded on the statements of Banta Singh PW 2, the bribegiver; Lal Singh PW 3 who acted as a shadow witness, Pritam Singh PW 7 who was a cosharer with Banta Singh PW 2 in the land to which Exhibit P 14 pertained and whose rights and interests were common with the said PW and was also in need of the said copy of the Khasra Girdawari; and Vigilance Inspector Bahadur Singh PW 8, the Investigator. In a nutshell, it is one of the usual cases of detecting such crimes by organizing a raid by the Vigilance Department.

Having heard the learned counsel for the parties, I find that the conviction of the appellant is rather shaky.

The crux of the prosecution case, as deposed by the abovenamed witnesses, is that since Banta Singh PW 2 and Pritam Singh PW 7 were to sell 32 kanals and 18 marlas of their land situated in village Bela Sariana. They approached the appellant on 11.1.1985 for the supply of a copy of the Khasra Girdawari of this land. The appellant demanded Rs. 100/ by way of illegal gratification for doing the needful. As PW 5, 2 and 7 had no mind to pay this amount to the appellant, they approached the Vigilance Inspector Bahadur Singh PW 8 on 14.1.1985 and disclosed their version which was reduced to writing in the form of a statement of Banta Singh, Exhibit PB. At this stage, Lal Singh PW 3, who was then passing from in front of the office of the Vigilance Inspector was called in and associated to play the role of a shadow witness. Bahadur Singh, Vigilance Inspector (PW 8), after completing the usual formalities of noting down the numbers of the currency notes to be passed on to the appellant and treating the same with phenolphthalein powder and preparing the requisite memos, headed the raiding party which left for the Patwarkahana (office of the appellant) in village Hajipur. On the basis of the statement Exhibit PB, a case was got registered in Police Station, Hajipur, vide FIR Exhibit PW/4. After reaching near the post office at Hajipur, the party scattered. PWs 2, 3 and 7 went to the chaubara of the appellant whereas the police people including PW8 continued to wait for the prearranged signal at some distance from there. At that time, the appellant was sitting in a chair in the sun on the open roof in front of the chaubara. Banta Singh PW 2 asked for the farad of the Khasra Girdawari and the accused, in turn, asked him as to whether he had brought the money. On demand Banta Singh PW 2 handed over Rs. 100/ to the appellant. Then the appellant started preparing the copy of the Khasra Girdawari Exhibit P 14 and handed it over to him after some time. Lal Singh PW 3, went downstairs and gave the specified signal to the police party standing at some distance in the bazar. Vigilance Inspector Bahadur Singh PW 8 along with others went upstairs and caught hold of the appellant from his arms and after disclosing his identity and getting himself searched, searched the person of the appellant and recovered the tainted money from the back pocket of his pant. After preparing the requisite memos of recovery etc. and completing the investigation, the appellant was sent up for trial with the result as indicated earlier.

In his statement under Section 313, Code of Criminal Procedure, the plea of the appellant was that the case was a concoction and had been manipulated to wreak vengeance against him. This is what he stated :

"I am innocent.

Banta Singh and Pritam Singh PWs had entered into an agreement with Sardool Singh etc. to sell their whole of land and they had received an earnest money from Sardool Singh etc. Banta Singh and Pritam Singh obtained copy of farad jambandi for this purpose and I had given a note in that farad that 32 Kanals 18 Marlas of land out of the land of Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, had been declared as surplus area and it was mutated in the name of Government and further said land measuring 32 Kanals 18 Marlas had been allotted to Jagdish Raj etc. and possession of this land had also been delivered to Jagdish Raj etc. by the Girdawari. Due to this note, Sardool Singh etc. did not purchase the whole of the land but they purchased only about 65 Kanals of land from Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, PWs, and did not purchase the remaining 32 Kanals 18 Marlas of land as it was declared surplus and was allotted to Jagdish Raj etc. In this way, Banta Singh and Pritam Singh suffered a loss of about Rs. 40,000/ for which they had quarrelled with me and tried to prevail upon me not to give this note for which I did not agree.

On 11.1.1985 I had gone to Talwara in the morning at about 9 A.M. and Banta Singh Patwari was also with me at Talwara and I deposited the Takai amount and the revenue recovered by me from the people in the Treasury and also attended the meeting with the Naib Tehsildar on that day at Talwara. Pritam Singh and Banta Singh did not meet me on 11.1.1985 as alleged by them.

On 14.1.1985 Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, PWs, came to me in my patwarkhana where I was sitting with Banta Singh Patwari PW and one Behari Lal of Dhadha Katwal. I again supplied copy of jamabandi to Banta Singh PW and after that he took me aside and tried to give me rupees one hundred as bribe but I did not agree to it. He forcibly put those currency notes in my back picket of the pant and when I was taking the currency notes out of my pocket to hand over these to Banta Singh PW, the police came there and apprehended me and falsely implicated me in this case at the asking of Banta Singh and Pritam Singh. I never demanded the bribe money from Banta Singh and Pritam Singh nor did they give it to me.

In fact, Banta Singh and Pritam singh, PWs, were already very close to Inspector Bahadur Singh during his service in Gurdaspur District. Lal Singh PW is a relation of Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, PWs. At that time when police reached my chaubara, Gopal Krishan, Bhulla Singh and others had also reached there simultaneously, who also witnessed the occurrence."

It is the conceded case of the prosecution that initially Banta Singh PW 2 and Pritam Singh PW 7 had purchased one 1/2 of 201 Kanals 12 Marlas of land in this village, i.e., Bela Sariana. Later, they entered into an agreement with Sardool Singh DW1 to sell their share of land to him. They had, as a matter of fact, sold 65 Kanals of this land to him a few days earlier to the present occurrence. In other words, they failed to sell the land (32 Kanals 18 Marlas), to which the copy of Khasra Girdawari Exhibit P. 14 pertained. The reason for this nonperformance of the contract by these vendors, according to the appellant, was that this land had been declared as surplus and had, as a matter of fact, been allotted to Jagdish Raj etc. and, therefore, these PWs could not sell it or Sardool Singh, the vendee, refused to purchase it. These PWs, while conceding that they had earlier sold about 65 Kanals of their land to Sardool Singh, could not tell any reason as to why they could not sell this part of the land. In the absence of any such explanation, the stand of the appellant that he had recorded a note on the copy of the farad jamabandi supplied to the vendors for purposes of executing the sale deed and these PWs insisted upon him not to record that note, to my mind, gains probability. As a matter of fact, it appears that the trial Court itself doubted the stand of these PWs in this regard. This is how it has observed in paragraph 11 of the judgment :

"Had the matter been upto this stage, it can be said that Pritam Singh and Banta Singh, had possibly made a plant to entrap the accused but then doubt is thrown to this theory when Sardool Singh DW 1 states that even at that time, when he and others refused to purchase the land 32 Kanals 18 Marlas from Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, the latter had requested the accused not to give note in the farad about the surplus nature of the land and that the accused did not agree, saying that he will issue the copy of the jamabandi, according to the record and that it was then that the complainant party had told the accused that they would "see to him". This does not appeal at all to mind. Suppose, at that time, when Pritam Singh and Banta Singh had told the Patwari in the presence of Sardool Singh not to give the note on the jamabandi, would Sardool Singh etc. still have purchased this 32 Kanals 18 Marlas of land? They certainly would not, because they had come to know about the surplus nature of that land. In such circumstances, it is not probable that Banta Singh and Pritam Singh would have told the accused in the presence of Sardool Singh to give such a note on the farad jamabandi. Accordingly, these facts have to be kept in mind while appreciating the prosecution evidence on the record but only to the extent to which these effect veracity of the prosecution witness and the probability of the defence version."

The Court appears to have unnecessarily posed and answered the question about the willingness of Sardool Singh to purchase the land, in question, in the absence of the note which the appellant had recorded on the farad jamabandi issued by him to the vendors. No such question was ever put to Sardool Singh who appeared as DW 1. Further, the question material for the consideration of the court was not whether Sardool Singh would have purchased the land in the absence of that note or not, but was whether the recording of that note did cause any annoyance to the vendors, i.e., PWs 2 and 7. As has been pointed out earlier, these witnesses have failed to disclose any reason as to why they could not sell the land, in question, to Sardool Singh when they executed a saledeed in his favour pertaining to 65 Kanals of land though they had initially agreed to transfer their entire share, i.e., about 100 Kanals of land. In the later part of its judgment, the trial Court has made the following observations while judging the veracity of the statements of these witnesses :

"The interest of Banta Singh and Pritam Singh are common and for that reason it can be said that reliance should not be placed upon the statement of Banta Singh and Pritam Singh, yet, in spite of thorough crossexamination of the witnesses including Lal Singh PW 3, it could not be brought on the record that Lal Singh was, in any way, interested either in the complainant or in the Investigating Officer, or that he had motive to falsely implicate the accused in this case."

So far as the evidence of Lal Singh PW 3 is concerned, it is very doubtful if he ever saw the passing of the tainted money to the appellant by Banta Singh PW 2. He has conceded in crossexamination that :

"Banta Singh PW, after coming into the chaubara, had informed the accused that he was ready with money and that the accused should prepare the farad and thereafter Banta Singh took the accused aside telling him that he should take the money. Upon this, I had come down stairs."

Moreover, the very association of this witness with the raiding party is rather dramatic and cannot safely be relied upon. It has authoritatively been ruled by their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Raghbir Singh v. State of Punjab, AIR 1976 Supreme Court 91, that the officers functioning in the anticorruption department must seriously endeavour to secure really independent and respectable witnesses so that the evidence in regard to raid inspires confidence in the mind of the Court and the Court is not left in any doubt as to whether or not any money was paid to the public servant by way of bribe. They should insist on observing this safeguard for the protection of public servants against whom a trap may have been laid.

The prosecution fails to satisfy this test. It is the conceded case of the prosecution witnesses that when statement Exhibit PB of Banta Singh was recorded by the VigilanceInspector Bahadur Singh PW8, he thought of associating a person with the raiding party and, on seeing Lal Singh who was just passing from in front of his office, called him in to play the role of a shadow witness. Otherwise, this witness undisputedly belong to a place about 80 kilometers from village Hajipur, i.e., where the Patwarkhana of the appellant was located. I, therefore, feel that it is not safe to rely on the statement of this witness.

For the reasons recorded above, I allow this appeal and set aside the judgment under appeal. The appellant is acquitted and his bail bonds are discharged. Fine, if already paid by him, be refunded.