Trial court must appropriately apply its judicial mind while deciding discharge application and not reject it summarily without examining evidence.

ORDER :

The subject petition is a part of batch of petitions filed calling in question certain proceedings instituted on one solitary incident. The incident is conduct of examination for Postgraduate Entrance by the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences. The batch of petitions is by several accused – few of them have sought quashment of entire proceedings and few of them have called in question the order of respective Court rejecting discharge applications filed by the accused. One such case is the subject revision petition. Since facts that lead to the filing of the present petition and respective contentions differ, I deem it appropriate to pass separate orders notwithstanding them being taken up together and arising out of the same incident. The petitioner in the subject petition is accused No.6.

2. Facts adumbrated are as follows:

The petitioner is a doctor by profession. On 12-02-2006 the petitioner as a student writes postgraduate entrance exam conducted by the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (‘the University’ for short) for admission to postgraduate course. The petitioner comes out successful in the entrance exam by securing higher percentage of marks and was accordingly given admission to the postgraduate course like every other student who participated in the selection process. After the selection was over, newspaper reports exploded certain malpractices in the conduct of entrance examination and they have projected that few of the students whose academic career prior to writing of the entrance examination was too low have all secured higher percentage of marks. The newspaper reports led to the Government of Karnataka constituting a Three Member Committee to go into the matter and submit a report. Based upon the report thereto, investigation was directed to be conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (‘CBI’ for short). The CBI conducts investigation and files a charge sheet. The petitioner in the charge sheet is arrayed as accused No.6. The charge sheet is filed against 20 accused including the petitioner. The offences alleged are the ones punishable under Section 13(1)(d) and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (‘the Act’ for short) and Sections 409, 420 r/w 120B of the IPC. The offence under the Act was alleged as few of the accused were public servants amongst others. Filing of charge sheet leads the petitioner to file an application seeking her discharge from the array of accused like every other accused who sought to file discharge applications before the concerned Court. The discharge application of the petitioner comes to be rejected. The rejection of the discharge application filed by the petitioner leads her to this Court in the subject petition.

3. Heard Sri C.V.Nagesh, learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner and Sri P.Prasanna Kumar, learned Special Public Prosecutor appearing for the respondent.

4. The learned senior counsel representing the petitioner would vehemently contend that merely because other students who have secured low marks in the preceding years of their career, the petitioner is also dragged into the web of crime. The petitioner is a rank student throughout her career. Certain statements that are recorded during the evidence by the prosecution would completely absolve the petitioner. Polygraph test and brain mapping tests were also conducted upon the petitioner. Both these have divulged nothing against her. Section 164 CrPC statement of one Anil Kumar, a witness of the prosecution does not even make a remote reference to the petitioner. Dr. Hanumanth Prasad who is also a prosecution witness has deposed that only 2 to 3 days prior to 11-02-2006, the date of conduct of examination he had met the petitioner concerning non-issuance of hall ticket and later hall ticket was issued to her. Except this statement, he would contend, that there is nothing