As per the prosecution, the incident took place in 2017. The convict Dutt had turned up at Tis Hazari court with an envelope containing Rs 50,000 and asked the Naib court attached with Additional Sessions Judge Chandra Shekhar to give it to the judge.
A Delhi court has convicted three men, including an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of Delhi Police, for bribing a judge to help with the recruitment of one of the convicts.
Special Judge Kiran Bansal convicted the three men ASI Tara Dutt, Mukul Kumar, the candidate on whose behalf a bribe was offered, and one Ramesh Kumar. A fourth accused in this case, Dayanand Sharma, was a special metropolitan magistrate with the MCD. He expired during the trial and proceedings against him were abated.
As per the prosecution, the incident took place in 2017. The convict Dutt had turned up at Tis Hazari court with an envelope containing Rs 50,000 and asked the Naib court attached with Additional Sessions Judge Chandra Shekhar to give it to the judge.
The envelope was to be given to the judge, who was a member of the recruitment committee at the time, so that he may favour Mukul for the post of a peon at Delhi district courts. Sharma was accused of asking Dutt to bribe the judge.
They were held guilty of being a part of a criminal conspiracy (120-B) in a Prevention of Corruption Act case.
The court said that the prosecution has “succeeded in proving beyond reasonable doubt that the accused persons namely Tara Dutt, Mukul Kumar and Ramesh Kumar had hatched a criminal conspiracy to abet, Chander Shekhar, Judge, to accept an amount of Rs 50,000 and pursuant to the aforesaid criminal conspiracy Dutt, delivered an envelope containing the amount through Surender Kumar, Naib Court, attached to the court of the Judge, for favouring accused no. 2, Mukul Kumar in the recruitment process for the post of Group C.”
The court convicted the three men noting that the Naib court’s testimony was reliable and trustworthy, the call records of the accused persons showed that they were in touch at the time, and Dutt’s presence at Tis Hazari court was established at the time through CCTV footage and his mobile phone location.
The defence counsel had argued that the prosecution witnesses had made statements that were “differently, inconsistently and contradictory with each other.”
The court said that “a reasonable human being can only recall the main purpose of a conversation and it is not expected of him to reproduce the exact words stated during any conversation.”
“Also, it is a settled law that the court should not attach undue importance to the discrepancies which do not shake the basic version of the prosecution case.” the court said.
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