Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Nov 21: Special Judge Anticorruption Jammu Tahir Khurshid Raina today rejected the bail application of Rohit Sharma, Tehsildar Bahu Jammu, who was caught red-handed by the Anticorruption Bureau while accepting bribe Rs 50,000.
The conspectus of the case as built by the prosecution against the accused applicant is that a written complaint was received by ACB, Rajouri (Camp Jammu) on 01-11-2022 from the complainant, namely, Sominder Singh alias Sourav, son of Darshan Singh of village Nari, tehsil RS Pura regarding demand of a bribe amount from him by the accused-applicant for issuance of Revenue extract-‘Fard’ required for executing a sale deed out of the land of two kanals situated at Thanger near Medicity Hospital, Jammu.
After hearing Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi for the applicant whereas APP Irshad Sheikh for the ACB, the court observed, “as per the status report dated 17-11-2022 the case is at its initial stage and the act of the applicant-accused is highly deplorable, because of which trust of the society at large has been shaken”.
“Moreover, in view of the conduct of the applicant, right from the day of registration of FIR, non-cooperation with the investigating agency, custodial questioning of him is required to ascertain some material facts associated with the investigation of the case as well as to ascertain nexus of other persons involved in the case. In case applicant is admitted to bail at this stage, there is every apprehension that he will win over the material witnesses and may threaten the complainant, which will ultimately hamper the investigation”, the court said.
During the course of hearing APP Irshad Sheikh appearing for the ACB submitted that the IO of the case while referring to some starling facts in the CD file, stated that this case is now heading towards the case of disproportionate assets against the accused for which his custody is inevitable.
As per the IO, a bill of Vardhman Jewellers amounting to Rs 1075916 was recovered from the accused pocket and he has purchased gold worth cost lakhs of rupees from the Vardhman Jewellers and some more jewellery he has kept in the custody of jeweller. Moreover, he has made some coded conversations on Whatsapp with around 10 jewellers for which the accused is not decoding the Whatsapp chat.
Further, he has made some coded conversation with his wife about some transactions for which he is not spelling out anything and he has multiple accounts in the banks, has many more transactions which he is not disclosing and is displaying a stubborn attitude. “Granting him bail just after one week of his arrest will derail the ongoing investigation by the ACB and will also demoralize the morale of the ACB which is all committed to expose corruption and corrupts in the officialdom”, the APP said.
“This court is quite conscious of these principles to be given a salutary status while deciding a bail application. However, in my humble appreciation, they are not to be applied blindly to the case to grant bail to the accused in a platter by the court on mere filing of the bail application, just in recognition of his right to life and liberty”, Special Judge Anti-corruption said while rejecting the bail application.
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