The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement for implicative evidence to support allegations and the limitations of filing a charge-sheet based solely on a written complaint. The court invoked its inherent powers under section 482 to truncate the prosecution, deeming the charge-sheet and consequential proceedings as an abuse of process of the Court.

ORDER : – A short but interesting question is involved in the present petition filed under section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“Cr.P.C.” for brevity) invoking the inherent powers of this Court seeking quashment of charge-sheet bearing Crime No. 154/2019 registered at Police Station Special Police Establishment Lokayukt, Jabalpur and the consequential proceedings in shape of Special Case (Lokayukt) No. 1/2021 pending before the Court of Special Judge (Lokayukt) Jabalpur.

2. The question is whether the quashment of impugned charge-sheet is permissible in law when the only evidence collected during investigation is as follows :

“(i) The written complaint dated 22-7-2019 of the complainant. (ii) The conversation in the Digital Voice Recorder (“DVR” for brevity) which when matched with the sample voice of the petitioner resulted into the following information of the Regional Forensic Laboratory, Bhopal: From the poorly recorded questioned voice recording marked Q-1 (A)/Q-1(B) and the specimen voice recording marked S-1(A)/S-2(B), sufficient common words/sentences having sufficient amount of speech data for auditory and spectrographic analysis could not be detected. Hence, opinion cannot be given as to whether the voice marked exhibit Q-1(A)/Q-1(B) is the probable voice of the person whose specimen voice is marked exhibit S-1(A)/S-2(B). (iii) The statement of the shadow witness Constable – Dinesh Dubey who merely saw the complainant and the petitioner sitting in a Car, from a distance but did not hear the conversation between them.”

3. Learned senior counsel for petitioner submits that with the aforesaid available evidence collected by prosecution during investigation, even if the same is accepted on its face value cannot led to commission of an offence punishable under section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (“PC Act” for brevity) as alleged.

3.1 It is also urged that there are certain other undisputed facts which reveal patent improbability of the incident and the foundational complaint being malicious and vexatious. These alleged undisputed facts are as follows :

“(i) Letter dated 23-9-2019 of Senior Accounts Officer MPPKVVCL, Jabalpur, reveals that till 11-7-2019 (the date of the incident), the final bills put up by the complainant were pending in the Office of Sr. Accounts Officer and not before the petitioner. (ii) Letter dated 23-9-2019 further reveals that these bills of the complainant reached the Office of Sr. Accounts Officer after being routed through Shri Ranjeet Kumar Maravi, Jr. Engineer, Shri Vivek Jaisele, Assistant Engineer and Shri Naveen Pandey, Executive Engineer and not through the petitioner. (iii) On 11-7-2019, this letter dated 23-9-2019 reveals that the petitioner’s posting was in the Office of the Executive Engineer, Sub Division and not in the STC Division. (iv) During the period from 11-7-2019 to 22-7-2019, none of the other similarly placed persons as that of the complainant was made any payment against their bills under Soubhagya Yojana. (v) This letter also reveals that there were stop payment instructions in regard to the bills of the complainant from the Office of Superior Authority and, therefore, question of petitioner making any payment did not arise. (vi) Lastly, in this letter, the Sr. Accounts Officer submitted that as against the pending bills of the complainant, an amount of Rs. 5,06,970/- was released which included the amount demanded under the Soubhagya Yojana but since the said amount had not been sanctioned yet, the complainant was informed about this inadvertent mistake and was made to refund the said amount.”

3.2. In the aforesaid background and the alleged implicative material collected during the investigation, learned senior counsel for petitioner submits that when the voice sample in the DVR did not match with the voice sample collected from petitioner, there was no occasion for the prosecution to proceed with the matter as the so-called implicative materi