The Madras High Court Bench here has acquitted two women employees of a panchayat from the charge of demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs.1,000 from an illiterate woman for disbursing financial assistance under the State government’s Moovalur Ramamirtham Ammaiyar Ninaivu Marriage Assistance scheme way back in 1998.
Allowing an appeal pending in the court since 2010, Justice S. Vimala held the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Tiruchi ought not to have convicted the appellants Kamalam and Angayee, former employees of Thathaiyangarpettai panchayat office, and sentenced them to two years of rigorous imprisonment in the absence of reliable evidence to prove their guilt.
The judge pointed out that the prosecution had not rebutted through clinching evidence the appellants’ claim that they took Rs.1,000 from the complainant to purchase Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), from a nearby Post Office in the name of the beneficiary, since such a purchase was mandatory for disbursing financial assistance under the scheme.
Though the prosecution claimed that KVP was purchased long before the appellants demanded and accepted the bribe, the judge said the claim had not been supported by trustworthy evidence. Further, the appellants had accused the prosecution of fabricating crucial documents to get them convicted and referred to some pages in the KVP application form having been torn and pasted again.
“When such an allegation has been put forth, it is for the prosecution to have cleared the doubt. It has not done so,” the judge observed and said the complainant too had not taken a consistent stand while deposing before the trial court since she had, during cross examination, agreed that Rs.1,000 was paid only for purchase of KVP.
They had been accused of taking Rs.1,000 from an illiterate woman for disbursing financial assistance
