Acquitting a former Railway Protection Force officer convicted of taking bribes for transfers and postings through intermediaries, the Supreme Court held that proof of money reaching an intermediary does not, by itself, establish that the public servant demanded or accepted it. It stressed that approver testimony needs independent corroboration, and that the Section 20 presumption arises only once the foundational facts of demand and acceptance by the accused are proved.
After a Delhi High Court order to release an undertrial on parole went unimplemented, and a later order imposing conditions was defied on the ground that it had not come ‘directly from the court’, the High Court drew contempt proceedings against the Tihar Jail Superintendent. It held that keeping a man behind bars despite a constitutional court’s release order, on a condition the court never imposed, violated his rights under Articles 14 and 21.
Granting bail to a man accused of sending an email with derogatory remarks against the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, the Allahabad High Court held that if a case for bail is otherwise made out, an accused cannot be kept incarcerated solely because of his criminal antecedents, where those antecedents stand explained. The man had been in custody for about two and a half years with the trial moving slowly. The allegations are untested.
Noting that the accused seen in the video and linked to DNA evidence had already been granted bail, and that the applicant had spent two and a half years in custody with only seven of thirty-one witnesses examined, the Delhi High Court held that his case prima facie stood on a better footing and granted bail despite his having been declared a proclaimed offender.
The Patna High Court quashed a photo studio owner’s conviction for attempted rape, holding that the allegations constituted outraging modesty but did not satisfy the legal ingredients of attempt to rape. The Court cited absence of medical evidence and any unequivocal overt act establishing attempted rape.
