When the Bribe Stops at the Intermediary: Supreme Court on Proof of Demand and Acceptance

In Bharat Raj Meena v. Central Bureau of Investigation,¹ the Supreme Court considered whether the receipt of alleged illegal gratification by intermediaries was sufficient to establish the appellant’s demand and acceptance of a bribe under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (“PC Act”).² The Court reiterated that while the law does not require a public servant to personally receive gratification in every case, the prosecution must establish, through reliable evidence, the connection between the intermediary, the demand and the accused. Finding reasonable doubt in the transactions that survived consideration before it, the Court allowed both appeals and acquitted the appellant.

The appellant, Bharat Raj Meena, was serving as Divisional Security Commissioner, Railway Protection Force, Palakkad Division, Southern Railway, between December 2004 and August 2005. The prosecution alleged that personnel seeking transfers, postings and other service-related benefits were required to pay illegal gratification, which was allegedly collected through subordinate officials acting as intermediaries.

The investigation identified several alleged transactions involving amounts ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹13,000. Two intermediaries, Anantha Narayanan and Abdul Gafoor, were initially arrayed as accused but were subsequently granted pardon under Section 306 of the Code of Criminal Procedure³ and examined as approver witnesses. The present appeals concerned two prosecutions arising from the larger investigation.

The first concerned P.P. Nandakumar, who alleged that he had been asked to pay ₹10,000 in connection with his posting. The prosecution arranged a trap on August 4, 2005. Anantha Narayanan was apprehended after receiving ₹5,000 from Nandakumar. The appellant himself was not apprehended with the money.

The second prosecution included allegations by T.V. Rajan, C.K. Aravindan and N.P. Gopi Kumar. By the time the matter reached the Supreme Court, only the transaction concerning Gopi Kumar remained relevant to the conviction. The High Court had affirmed the appellant’s conviction in that transaction.

The Supreme Court restated the settled principle that proof of demand and acceptance of illegal gratification is central to a prosecution under the PC Act. Referring to decisions including C.M. Girish Babu v. CBI,⁴ B. Jayaraj v. State of Andhra Pradesh,⁵ P. Satyanarayana Murthy v. District Inspector of Police⁶ and the Constitution Bench judgment in Neeraj Dutta v. State (Government of NCT of Delhi),⁷ the Court emphasised that recovery of money, by itself, does not establish the offence.

The Court also clarified the role of circumstantial evidence. Demand need not invariably be proved through direct evidence; it may, in an appropriate case, be established through reliable surrounding circumstances. However, the prosecution must first establish the foundational facts necessary for invoking the statutory presumption under Section 20 of the PC Act.⁸ The presumption does not relieve the prosecution of this initial burden.

This principle assumed particular importance where the alleged bribe was received by someone other than the accused.

Can an intermediary receive the bribe?

The Court answered this question in the affirmative as a matter of law, but subject to an important evidentiary qualification.

A public servant need not personally receive the money in every case. The Court relied on State by Lokayuktha Police v. K. Rangayya⁹ to recognise that a public servant may act through another person or subordinate and may obtain an undue advantage for another person. The statutory scheme therefore does not create a requirement of personal physical receipt by the public servant in every prosecution.

However, this principle does not mean that every payment made to a subordinate or intermediary can automatically be attributed to the public servant. The prosecution must establish that the intermediary was acting under the accused’s authority or direction, or for the accused’s benefit, and that the demand itself was attributable to the accused.

The Court therefore drew a distinction between receipt of money by an intermediary and acceptance or obtainment of gratification by the accused. The former may constitute evidence of the latter, but it does not automatically prove it.

In relation to Nandakumar, the prosecution relied principally upon Nandakumar’s testimony and that of Anantha Narayanan, the intermediary who was apprehended with the ₹5,000. The Supreme Court identified material inconsistencies in their accounts. Nandakumar stated that he met the appellant, informed him that he had brought the money and was instructed to hand it over to Anantha Narayanan. Anantha Narayanan, however, had earlier instructed Nandakumar to give the money directly to the appellant. Further, Anantha Narayanan did not depose that the appellant had specifically asked him to collect the money from Nandakumar.

The Court also considered it significant that the appellant allegedly did not accept the money when it was offered to him directly. Instead, according to the prosecution evidence, he asked Nandakumar to give it to Anantha Narayanan and then left the premises.

The Court further noted that the transfer sought by Nandakumar was within the authority of the Senior Divisional Personnel Officer rather than the appellant. Evidence from the relevant railway officials indicated that the appellant had no authority or role in effecting that particular transfer. This circumstance added to the doubt surrounding the prosecution’s allegation that the appellant had demanded money for securing it.

The manner in which the trap was executed also attracted the Court’s attention. Although the alleged bribe was ultimately intended, according to the prosecution, to reach the appellant, the trap was brought to an end immediately after the money was recovered from the intermediary. The Court observed that allowing the intermediary to proceed further could have produced evidence more directly establishing whether the money was actually intended for or reached the appellant. The Court treated the premature conclusion of the trap as a significant investigative lacuna.

Consequently, while the evidence established that money had changed hands between Nandakumar and Anantha Narayanan, it did not establish beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant had accepted or obtained it.

The Court also examined the evidence of Anantha Narayanan and Abdul Gafoor, both of whom had originally been accused and subsequently became approvers. Under the law of evidence, an accomplice is a competent witness, and a conviction is not legally impermissible merely because it rests upon accomplice evidence. Nevertheless, the rule of prudence reflected in Section 114, Illustration (b) of the Evidence Act¹⁰ requires courts to approach such evidence with caution and ordinarily seek material corroboration connecting the accused with the offence.

The Supreme Court stressed that corroboration must go beyond proving that a transaction occurred. In the Nandakumar transaction, the evidence corroborated the fact that Anantha Narayanan collected money. It did not independently corroborate the critical assertion that the money was to be delivered to the appellant or that the appellant would ultimately receive it.

The Court found that an inference that the appellant would have received the money at his residence, had the trap not intervened, remained only one possible hypothesis. Another reasonable possibility was that the intermediary had retained or dealt with the money independently. Since the prosecution evidence did not exclude such a reasonable hypothesis, the required standard of proof was not met.

The Court separately examined the transaction involving Gopi Kumar. Here, the prosecution case was that Gopi Kumar was summoned to the appellant’s residence, where Abdul Gafoor allegedly communicated a demand for the balance amount. Gopi Kumar then allegedly handed ₹3,000 to Abdul Gafoor, who took the money inside and handed it to the appellant.

The Supreme Court nevertheless found evidentiary difficulties. The Inspector who allegedly contacted Gopi Kumar at the appellant’s instance was not examined, and no call record was produced. No independent duty or movement record placed the appellant at his residence at the relevant time. Moreover, the alleged payment was not part of a trap, and no currency was recovered or otherwise traced to the appellant.

The Court also considered the appellant’s contemporaneous diary. The only date attributed to the transaction in the record was 30 July 2005, appearing in the approver’s Section 164 CrPC¹¹ statement. The diary recorded that the appellant had left Palakkad on 29 July and returned only on the night of 31 July. The prosecution did not explain this discrepancy.

In these circumstances, the Court concluded that the foundational facts necessary to sustain the conviction had not been established with the required degree of certainty.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court ultimately allowed both appeals and acquitted Bharat Raj Meena of the charges in the two prosecutions. It discharged his bail bonds and directed that any fine deposited be refunded. The Court did not find it necessary to examine the appellant’s allegation of conspiracy or his challenge to the prosecution sanction, having already concluded that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the convictions.

The judgment does not hold that an intermediary can never receive illegal gratification on behalf of a public servant. Rather, it draws a critical evidentiary line: the prosecution must connect the intermediary’s receipt to the accused through reliable evidence of demand, direction, authority, benefit or ultimate acceptance.

Where that link remains uncertain, the fact that money changed hands, even following an alleged demand, cannot by itself establish the accused’s acceptance or obtainment of illegal gratification. As the Court observed while discussing R.P.S. Yadav v. CBI,¹² a demand and an initial handover to an intermediary are not enough; the evidentiary chain must be carried through to the accused.

Citations

1. Bharat Raj Meena v. Central Bureau of Investigation 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 945 ↩︎
2. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 ↩︎
3. The Code of Criminal Procedure s.306 ↩︎
4. C.M. Girish Babu v. CBI (2009) 3 SCC 779 ↩︎
5. B. Jayaraj v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2014) 13 SCC 55 ↩︎
6. P. Satyanarayana Murthy v. District Inspector of Police (2015) 10 SCC 152 ↩︎
7. Neeraj Dutta v. State (Government of NCT of Delhi) (2023) 4 SCC 731 ↩︎
8. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 s. 20 ↩︎
9. State by Lokayuktha Police v. K. Rangayya 2026 SCC OnLine SC 963 ↩︎
10. The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 s. 114, Illustration (b) ↩︎
11. The Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 s. 164 ↩︎
12. R.P.S. Yadav v. CBI (2015) 11 SCC 642 ↩︎

Expositor(s): Adv. Vatsala pandit