The Supreme Court on Saturday granted relief from jail sentence after 30 years to a 76-year-old government servant who demanded and accepted a bribe of Rs. 265 in a trap case from a contractor in 1984, but imposed a hefty fine of Rs. 50,000 in lieu of imprisonment.
The sessions court in April 2003 convicted V.K. Verma and sentenced him to a year and a half and fined him Rs. 50,000. The Delhi High Court declined to interfere with the conviction and sentence and dismissed the appeal in July 2013.
The Supreme Court Bench said, “One wonders how it took 10 years for the matter to be registered as a sessions case and stranger is it to see that the trial also took almost 10 years and still stranger is that the matter took 10 years in the High Court.”
