A Delhi court has sentenced an Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) officer to two years of rigorous imprisonment for demanding a bribe of ₹1 lakh from an employee for issuing a transfer order for his posting to Delhi from Coimbatore. The court also imposed a fine of ₹1 lakh on Krishan Pal Singh Gautam.
Sentence suspended
However, Special Judge Kamini Lau suspended his sentence to enable him to file an appeal in the Delhi High Court against the judgment, as per the provision under Criminal Procedure Code. The court took a lenient view while sentencing Gautam, allowing his plea that he has to take care of his aged mother, ailing wife and unmarried children.
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The prosecutor opposed his plea for a soft punishment, saying that the convict did not deserve any leniency as he had misused his official position.
The CBI had caught Gautam red-handed while taking a bribe of ₹50,000 from Mayank Singh Pundir. The probe agency had registered the case against the officer in November 2013 on a complaint by Mr. Pundir, an assistant at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore.
The complainant alleged that he had applied for transfer to IASRI in Delhi from Coimbatore, and met Gautam in this regard. Gautam, he said, had demanded a bribe of ₹1 lakh for issuing a transfer order.
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