By the Court.—This petition is again a reminder about what can be perceived, if established, as a failure of constitutional obligations by the State and its authorities in exercise of its discretion while flexing statutory executive powers and its consequential impact resulting in failure in the administration of justice.

2. The issue in short is the correctness, legality, rationality and validity of the Government Order dated 7th July, 2014 whereby the State Government of Uttar Pradesh has decided to withdraw the prosecution in exercise of its statutory powers under Section 321 Cr.P.C. pending against the 7th respondent, Kamlesh Kumar Yadav, the then Regional Manager, Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation Ltd., Kanpur in an offence in Case Crime No. 3 of 2009 under Section 7/13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, Police Station-Kalyanpur, District - Kanpur, pending trial before the learned Special Magistrate (Prevention of Corruption Act), Lucknow.

3. On a presentation of the present writ petition a division bench of this Court on 1.8.2014 passed an interim order staying the operation of the order dated 7.7.2014 which order was subsequently continued till further orders by another division bench vide order dated 30.10.2014.

4. The allegation against the 7th respondent is that in a matter of land allotment to the petitioner by the State Industrial Development Corporation, the 7th respondent created impediments motivatedly with a view to seek illegal gratification which culminated in the alleged demand and acceptance of a bribe of Rs. 10 Lacs in lieu of such allotment, with a further allegation that unless the demand was fulfilled the allotment would not be made. The primary and foundational evidence on such allegations was supplemented by a trap laid by the Superintendent of Police, Vigilance and the report whereof alleges that the aforesaid sum of money in a briefcase was to be delivered to the 7th respondent and on positive information and after completing formalities the Police Team succeeded in having trapped the 7th respondent red-handed accepting the said bribe.

5. Thus, this was not a voluntary tendering of a bribe but was an undue demand under a veiled threat of denying allotment of land, and was that form of bribery where compulsion was the underlying theme of the intention of the recipient, namely the 7th respondent. The petitioner, therefore, decided to fight a battle against a prevalent practice namely, “they will best succeed, who best can pay” and against the belief of what Massinger said “petitions not sweetened with gold are but unsavoury, and often refused; or if received, are pocketed, not read”. The crusade of the petitioner is against the age old immoral practice of bribery, that has seethed into our social fabric at all levels of human relations including sovereign functions and values, the proportion whereof has grown commensurate to the growth and development of human civilization. An in-depth study of this massive problem has found its way in various authorities, one of which expounds its various dimensions by John T. Noonan, Jr. in his exhaustive and globally famous exposition titled as “Bribes”, The intellectual history of a moral idea. The petitioner appears to have felt strongly about the injustice being meted out to him who was being driven to the wall to believe what Joseph Addison said, as follows :

“A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb