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Generate professional replies, appeals, opinions to Show Cause Notices, assessment orders, audit objections, and other legal communications using TaxTMI's AI Drafter.
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AI Drafter - (New and Powerful) ✕ Generate professional replies, appeals, opinions to Show Cause Notices, assessment orders, audit objections, and other legal communications using TaxTMI's AI Drafter.
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Issues: (i) whether the prosecution proved demand and acceptance of illegal gratification so as to attract the statutory presumption; (ii) whether the High Court was justified in reversing the acquittal recorded by the Special Judge.
Issue (i): whether the prosecution proved demand and acceptance of illegal gratification so as to attract the statutory presumption.
Analysis: The evidence was found unreliable on multiple material aspects, including delay in lodging the complaint, contradictions in the testimony of the principal witnesses, interpolation in the post-trap record, doubtful trap proceedings, and the absence of convincing proof that any demand was made by the appellant for himself. The statutory presumption could arise only after proof of acceptance of gratification in the context of a proved demand, and the burden on the accused was not of the same rigorous standard as that on the prosecution.
Conclusion: The prosecution failed to prove demand and the statutory presumption did not arise; the finding was in favour of the appellant.
Issue (ii): whether the High Court was justified in reversing the acquittal recorded by the Special Judge.
Analysis: The Special Judge had given detailed reasons for disbelieving the prosecution case, and those findings were not shown to be wholly unsustainable. In an appeal against acquittal, interference is not warranted where two views are reasonably possible and the trial court's view is a plausible one.
Conclusion: The reversal of acquittal by the High Court was not sustainable; the finding was in favour of the appellant.
Final Conclusion: The conviction was set aside and the acquittal restored, bringing the proceedings to a final end in favour of the appellant.
Ratio Decidendi: In prosecutions under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the presumption under Section 20 arises only when demand and acceptance are proved, and an appellate court should not interfere with an acquittal if the trial court's view is a plausible one.
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