IMPORTANT POINT
Any acquisition of wealth disproportionate to known sources of income even prior to coming into force of the PC Act, 1964 have to be taken into account.

JUDGMENT

Dr. Arijit Pasayat, J. —

1. Challenge in this appeal is to the judgment of a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court. By the impugned judgment the High Court set aside the judgment of the trial Court, and directed acquittal of the respondent.

2. Background facts in a nutshell are as follows:

The respondent a government servant was Inspector of Police at the time when a raid was conducted in his house on 28.12.1971. He was convicted for offence punishable under Section 5(1)(e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 (in short the ‘Act’) and was sentenced to under minimum sentence of one year and was directed to pay a fine of Rs.2,50,000/-. The only point which was examined by the High Court was whether the respondent could be convicted for acquisition of wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income prior to 1964 i.e. from the date of inception of service on 29.5.1944 till the date of raid under Section 5(1)(e) which came into force only on 18.12.1964. The High Court was of the view that any acquisition of wealth said to be disproportionate to his known sources of income prior to 1964 could not be taken into account since prior to 1964 the same was not an offence. Reliance was placed by two judgments for the purpose one of this Court in State of Maharashtra v. Kaliar Koli Subramaniaum Ramaswamy1 (1977 (3) SCC 525), and the other of the Bombay High Court in Ramanand Pundalik Kamat v. State of Maharashtra2 (ILR 1973 Bom 1066).

3. The primary stand of learned counel for the appellant is that the scope and ambit of Section 5(1)(e) of the Act has been lost sight of.

4. Learned counsel for the respondent on the other hand supported the judgment.

5. Section 5(1)(e) of the Act reads as follows :

“5. Criminal misconduct in discharge of official duty:

1. A public servant is said to commit the offence of criminal misconduct..

(e) if he, or any person on his behalf is in possession or has at any time during the period of his office, been in possession for which the public servant cannot satisfactory account of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to his known sources of income.”

6. A three-Judge Bench of this Court in Sajjan Singh v. State of Punjab3 (1964(4) SCR 630) noted as follows:

“12. Mr Lall contends that when the section speaks of the accused being in possession of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to his known sources of income only pecuniary resources or property acquired after the date of the Act is meant. To think otherwise, says the learned counsel, would be to give the Act retrospective operation and for this there is no justification. We agree with the learned counsel that the Act has no retrospective operation. We are unable to agree however that to take into consideration the pecuniary resources or property in the possession of the accused or any other person on his behalf which are acquired before the date of the Act is in any way giving the Act a retrospective operation.

13. A statute cannot be said to be retrospective ‘because a part of the requisites for its actions is drawn from a time antecedent to its passing? (Maxwell on Interpretation of Statutes, 11th Edn., p. 211; see also State of Bombay v. Vishnu Ramchandran). Notice must be taken in this connection of a suggestion made by the learned counsel that in effect sub-section 3 of Section 5 creates a new offence in the discharge of official duty, different from what is defined in the four clauses of Section 5(1). It is said that the act of being in possession of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to known sources of income, if it cannot be satisfactorily accounted for, is said by this sub-section to constitute the offence of criminal misconduct in addition to those other acts mentioned in clauses a, b, c and d of Section 5(1) which constitute the offence of criminal misconduct. On the basis of this contention the further argument is built that if the pecuniary resources or property acquired before the dat