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Issues: (i) Whether, on the facts proved, the requirement identified in the earlier precedent concerning specification of the other public servant applied to the charge under Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code. (ii) Whether an officer of a State transport corporation taking a bribe could be treated as a public servant within Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 43 of the Road Transport Corporation Act, 1950.
Issue (i): Whether, on the facts proved, the requirement identified in the earlier precedent concerning specification of the other public servant applied to the charge under Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code.
Analysis: The earlier precedent was confined to the part of Section 161 dealing with gratification taken as a motive or reward for rendering or attempting to render service or disservice to a person with some other public servant. That requirement arose because the accused there was not connected with the office in which the desired act was to be done. Here, the accused was employed in the very office responsible for the appointment sought, and the money was taken for doing an official act in that office. In such a case, the absence of an express specification of another public servant did not defeat the charge.
Conclusion: The earlier precedent did not govern this case, and the charge was not vitiated for want of naming another public servant.
Issue (ii): Whether an officer of a State transport corporation taking a bribe could be treated as a public servant within Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 43 of the Road Transport Corporation Act, 1950.
Analysis: Section 43 deemed members, officers and servants of the corporation to be public servants only when acting or purporting to act in pursuance of the Act or any other law. Taking a bribe could not be characterised as an act done in pursuance of the Act or any other law. The later amendment to Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code made the position different for the future, but at the relevant time the statutory language of Section 43 controlled. The trial court's view that the accused was not a public servant under the unamended law was therefore correct.
Conclusion: The accused was not a public servant within Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code as it then stood, and the acquittal was sustainable on that ground.
Final Conclusion: The appeal failed, and the acquittal of both respondents was maintained.
Ratio Decidendi: Where a transport corporation employee takes money for an act that cannot be said to be done in pursuance of the governing statute, he does not fall within the public-servant deeming provision for the purpose of prosecution under Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code as then applicable.
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