M.F. SALDANHA, J. :---Exceptional as it may seem, this set of appeals concerns the familiar situation of an approach being made to a Minister that the law should be transgressed, the reward offered being a large sum of money. That the offer and the temptation to indulge in a corrupt practice emanates from the beneficiary of such dubious schemes, with the public official falling a prey to the incentive that is held out, is the general pattern and it is equally common place to find an ever willing response from the party in power. It is indeed unusual and in fact very rare to find a person of integrity who not only resists the attractiveness of the bribe but has the moral and physical courage to bring the culprits to book. This case represents the out of the ordinary and deals with an outstanding Home Minister of the Maharashtra Government who displayed exceptional integrity and courage and went through the exercise of having the entire gang which included a senior lawyer, trapped; and then withstood the rigours of a protracted trial and all the counter attacks on him that this was a political play to project his image as a person of high moral fibre, and who saw the oper