Aravind Kumar, J.

Petitioner who has been arraigned as accused No.2 in Cr. No.59/2014 by Lokayuktha Police registered for the offence punishable under Section 201, 465, 468, 471 and 420 of IPC and for the offences under Section 13 (1) (c) (d) and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act is seeking for being enlarged on bail.

2. According to the initial case of the prosecution a private complaint under Section 200 Cr.P.C. came to be filed by Sri. H.T. Ravi (hereinafter referred to as 'Complainant') which was registered in PCR No.37/2014 against one Sri. Chandrashekhar Hiremath. It was alleged by the complainant that he is a practicing Advocate at Theerthahalli and practicing on both civil and criminal side and had applied and appeared in the examination conducted by the Dept. of Prosecution and Government Litigation for the post of "Assistant Public Prosecutor/Assistant Government Pleaders" (for short APP/AGP) and had successfully passed in the written examination and viva-voce and he was not selected. Hence, suspecting foul play in the selection process he had applied for certified copy of the answer sheets under the Right to Information Act, 2005, and though information was turned down initially, he had received the information and found that candidates who did not have merit had got selected through malpractice. Hence, a private complaint was lodged before the Special Judge for Prevention of Corruption Cases, Bangalore, which was referred for investigation by the jurisdictional Court to the respondent therein.

3. On registering the FIR in Cr.No.59/2014 for the offences referred to herein above, investigation as taken up by respondent and on enquiry with the Officials and several other persons including petitioner, accused No.1 and on recording their statements and obtaining their handwriting and specimen signatures, it was sent to examination by the Forensic Science Laboratory and has been found that there had been large scale of manipulation and malpractice in relation to answer sheets of 2014 examination of APP / AGP. It is alleged by the prosecution that several answer sheets have been tampered by overwriting the marks, higher marks awarded, face sheets have been changed, stapler pins replaced, signatures of the evaluators who were then District Judges were forged, signatures of invigilators are forged apart from other discrepancies and this had been done to benefit the undeserving candidates and by altering their marks for higher marks. It is the further case of the prosecution that original answer scripts have been sent to FSL for examination and the partial report of the FSL received has confirmed that in relation to 10 of the answer sheets belonging to five candidates have been tampered and IO has come to the conclusion regarding role of the petitioner in the commission of the above offences and as such petitioner came to be arrested on 30.03.2017.

4. Accused No.2 sought for being enlarged on bail by filing an application under Section 439 Cr.P.C. before the jurisdictional Court. The Special Judge, by order dated 07.04.2017 has rejected the said application. Hence, petitioner has filed the present petition for grant of regular bail.

5. I have heard the arguments of Sri Ravi B Naik, learned Senior Counsel appearing for petitioner and Sri Venkatesh S Arabatti, Special Counsel and Special Public Prosecutor appearing for respondent and perused the case papers including the original records made available by the learned Public Prosecutor during the course of hearing.

6. It is the contention of Sri Ravi B Naik, learned Senior Counsel appearing for petitioner that in the private complaint filed by the complainant, no allegation has been made against the petitioner and entire allegation is against accused No.1 - Sri Chandrashekar Hiremath, who was incharge Director of Prosecution and Member Secretary of Selection Committee - APP/AGPs and FIR is also registered against him. It is contended that nowhere the name of petitio