Rajasthan High Court: Pushpendra Singh Bhati, J., refused to interfere with the impugned order due to lack of any legal infirmity.
The facts of the case are such that an F.I.R., was lodged against the revisionist-petitioner for the offences under Sections 13 (1) (e) / 13 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (hereinafter referred to as ‘Act of 1988’) after two months of the recovery of an amount of Rs 50,000/- which was alleged to be bribe money. The said F.I.R. was lodged after a delay of about 2 months from the date of recovery of the said amount from the revisionist petitioner. Thus, the charge sheet was filed against the petitioner under the aforementioned provisions of the Act of 1988. The instant criminal revision petition under Section 397 read with Section 401 CrPC was preferred seeking quashing of the impugned order.
Counsel for the petitioner submitted that without looking into the facts and circumstances of the case, passed the impugned order, whereby it proceeded with framing of charges against the revisionist-petitioner, despite the factum of delay of two months in registration of the FIR.
Counsel for respondent submitted that after taking into due consideration all the facts and circumstances of the present case and after considering the evidence placed on record before it, has rightly passed the impugned order.
The Court relied on judgment Union of India v. Prafulla Kumar Samal, (1979) 3 SCC 4 wherein it was observed that
Strong suspicion against the accused, if the matter remains in the region of suspicion, cannot take the place of proof of his guilt at the conclusion of the trial. But at the initial stage if there is a strong suspicion which leads the Court to think that there is ground for presuming that the accused has committed an offence then it is not open to the Court to say that there is no sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused.
The Court further relied on judgment State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335 and observed that if a strong suspicion exists in the mind of the court at the stage concerned, then the same is sufficient for the court to proceed with the framing of the charge against the accused person(s). And if a prayer for discharge has been made before a revisional court, then the same may only be allowed if the court finds that the materials on record are wholly insufficient for the purpose of trial.
The Court held “this Court does not find any legal infirmity in the impugned order passed by the learned court below so as to warrant any interference, at this stage.”
[Sudhir Bordiya v. State, 2022 SCC OnLine Raj 765, decided on 20-04-2022]
Appearances:
For Petitioner(s): Mr. C.S. Kotwani
For Respondent(s): Mr. S.S. Rajpurohit
