KCB officer's conviction in bribery case set aside

PUNE: The Bombay high court has set aside a Pune special court's February 25, 2005 ruling that convicted and sentenced the then health superintendent of the Khadki Cantonment Board (KCB) to one-year rigorous imprisonment in a bribery case.
The anti-corruption bureau had booked the KCB officer, Bharat Shrikant Naik, for allegedly demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 10,000 in his office from complainant Rafiq Rashid Qureshi on January 24, 2001on the pretext of allowing the latter to start a rickshaw garage near a PCMT bus stop in Khadki.
In the impugned ruling, the trial court sentenced Naik to one-year rigorous jail for each of the two offences punishable under Sections 7 and 13 (1) (d), which refers to criminal misconduct by a public servant, of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The sentences were to run concurrently . On a plea moved soon after the judgement, the trial court granted bail to Naik considering that the sentence was for a period less than three years and the convict wanted to move an appeal in the high court.Naik, who was later dismissed from service by the KCB, moved the high court by filing an appeal through his lawyer Aniket Ujjwal Nikam.
The single-judge bench of Justice P N Deshmukh set aside the trial court's judgement on the grounds that the sanction to prosecute Naik was not valid as it was not issued by his appointing authority . The evidence given by independent panch witness too was not reliable, the bench observed.
Saumik Mujumdar, the then KCB chief executive officer (CEO), had issued the sanction to prosecute Naik.The bench held that the KCB CEO was the appointing authority for employees holding non-supervisory posts and not for the employees holding supervisory posts for whom the board was the appointing authority.
The bench also found flaws in the evidence recorded by the complainant in relation to the alleged demand of bribe by Naik and the circumstances in which the money was kept in one of the files in Naik's office while he had gone out of office. It observed that the complaint was drafted by the complainant at the behest of his friend, a union leader, who was not on good terms with Naik and the money too was kept in the file at the behest of Patel.
When contacted, Naik told TOI, “I have suffered on account of a false case initiated against me. I will now seek legal remedy for reinstatement with full back wages as I still have some five to six years of service left.“