MES subedar walks free in bribe case after tribunal finds trap evidence botched

Subedar Ganga Ram was serving at the HQ Commander Works Engineer (Air Force) Lohegaon, Pune, and was tried for committing two offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 – obtaining Rs 50,000 as a bribe from a person to facilitate the allotment of a wet canteen contract, and for possession of Rs 9,20,000 as assets disproportionate to his known source of income.

As per the prosecution, the accused had demanded a bribe and the conversation was recorded by the complainant on his mobile phone. A complaint was lodged with military police authorities in Pune and a trap team consisting of officers and representatives of vigilance, Corps of Military Police, Military Intelligence, and others was set up.

The team laid a trap in the subedar’s office in January 2020. Subsequently, after getting a pre-decided signal from the complainant, the team entered his office and retrieved Rs 50,000, the bribe money, and Rs 2,30,000 lying in a bag in his office.

The complainant had been given spy camera devices to record the audio and video proceedings of the transaction of giving the bribe.

A court martial found the subedar guilty of both charges in July 2023 and sentenced him to four years of rigorous imprisonment and dismissal from the service.

Brigadier Janesh Khera (Retd), the defence counsel at the court martial, filed an appeal against the findings and sentence of the trial. The main contentions in the appeal were that the currency notes were not smeared with phenolphthalein powder and that the complainant was not searched before he entered the premises of HQ CWE (AF) Lohegaon, Pune, to give a bribe to the accused.

It was also contended that no witness had seen the complainant entering the premises and no panch or shadow witness had accompanied the complainant to hear or witness the transaction of the bribe.

Military Intelligence later denied that any of its personnel had accompanied the team nabbing the accused and none of its personnel were examined in the court martial. This was even though a witness went on record to testify that the spy camera devices on the complainant were fitted by the Military Intelligence personnel.

Further, the recorded conversation between the accused and the complainant, which was the basis of the trap, was not produced at the trial. The complainant did not produce his phone to verify the malfunction of the phone as he later claimed. The spy devices’ audio and video recording of the bribe payment was also not produced at the court martial.

The seizure memo of the currency notes was prepared on the next day in the military police unit and not at the spot. There were other inconsistencies too in the evidence of the witnesses of the trap team.

The AFT Mumbai bench, after observing that the prosecution had left too many gaps, noted that these gaps impeded the prosecution story from being proven to the hilt and gave the benefit of the doubt to the accused.