Neeraj Dutta v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2022): proving 'demand' of a bribe by circumstantial evidence

For nearly a decade, the fate of a corruption prosecution could turn on a single accident of proof: whether the complainant lived long enough, and stayed willing enough, to testify to the bribe he had paid. Two three-judge benches had said that without the complainant's own direct evidence of demand, the charge failed. On 15 December 2022, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in Neeraj Dutta v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi) held otherwise, and settled the law: demand — the ingredient the whole offence rests on — can be inferred from surrounding circumstances when direct evidence is missing.

Why a Constitution Bench was needed

Under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, proof of demand of illegal gratification is a sine qua non. Mere recovery of tainted currency from a public servant, or its mere acceptance, is not enough; the prosecution must first prove that the money was demanded, and only then does the statutory presumption under section 20 arise. That much was settled. The difficulty was evidentiary. What happens when the one witness who can speak to the demand — the complainant — has died before trial, or has turned "hostile" and disowned his own complaint?

Two three-judge decisions, B. Jayaraj v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2014) and P. Satyanarayana Murthy v. District Inspector of Police (2015), had answered that in the absence of the complainant's primary evidence of demand, an inferential deduction of guilt was impermissible, and the conviction could not stand. But an earlier three-judge bench in M. Narsinga Rao v. State of A.P. (2001) had sustained a conviction on circumstantial evidence even where the prosecution witnesses turned hostile, drawing a factual presumption from the events surrounding the trap. Faced with this conflict, a three-judge bench in 2019 referred the question to a bench of appropriate strength, and the Chief Justice constituted the five-judge bench.

The question referred

The reference, extracted in the judgment authored by Nagarathna, J., framed the "neat question" precisely:

"The question whether in the absence of evidence of complainant/direct or primary evidence of demand of illegal gratification, is it not permissible to draw inferential deduction of culpability/guilt of a public servant under Section 7 and Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 based on other evidence adduced by the prosecution."

Untangling demand, acceptance and obtainment

Before answering, the Court dissected what the prosecution must actually prove. Section 7 is made out by an offer from the bribe-giver which the public servant accepts; section 13(1)(d)(i) and (ii) require obtainment — a prior demand by the public servant, followed by payment which he receives. In both limbs, the Court stressed, mere acceptance or receipt "without anything more" is not the offence; there must be an offer that is accepted, or a demand that is met. Demand, in other words, is the gravamen — and it does not vanish merely because the person who paid the bribe cannot be produced.

The Court then separated two distinct engines of proof that had been conflated in the conflicting decisions. A presumption of fact — an inference the court may draw under section 114 of the Evidence Act from proved foundational facts — is discretionary. The presumption of law under section 20 of the PC Act is mandatory, but it arises only once demand and acceptance are established. The trilogy of cases had gone wrong, the Bench found, in treating the absence of the complainant's direct testimony as fatal to the first step, forgetting that a fact in issue can be proved by circumstantial as well as direct evidence.

The hostile witness does not erase the case

A large part of the anxiety in B. Jayaraj and P. Satyanarayana Murthy was the hostile or absent complainant. The Bench clarified, drawing on section 154 of the Evidence Act and Sat Paul v. Delhi Administration (1976), that a witness declared "hostile" is not thereby washed off the record. His evidence must be weighed with care, and the part of it that is creditworthy — and corroborated by the facts of the case — may be acted upon.

The answer

Reconciling the precedents, the Court held there was no real conflict once the two presumptions were kept distinct: M. Narsinga Rao was correct, and B. Jayaraj and P. Satyanarayana Murthy were confined to their facts, where the prosecution had simply failed to prove demand by any mode. The reference was answered in a single operative sentence:

Why the decision matters

Neeraj Dutta closes a gap that had let corruption cases fail on procedural misfortune rather than on the merits. A complainant's death, or a witness bought over and turned hostile, no longer hands the accused an automatic acquittal; the prosecution may build demand from the shadow witness, the trap panch, the recovery, and the surrounding conduct, and invite the court to infer it. At the same time the Bench preserved the safeguards that make the PC Act a criminal statute rather than a strict-liability trap: the inference of demand is discretionary and rebuttable, mere recovery is still not enough, and the section 20 presumption remains anchored to proof of demand and acceptance. The judgment thus strengthens enforcement without diluting the presumption of innocence — a balance the Court framed against the backdrop of corruption "corroding, like cancerous lymph nodes, the vital veins of the body politic."

The ruling sits alongside other recent Constitution Bench and larger-bench correctives to anti-corruption procedure, including the retrospective reach of the section 6A DSPE safeguard and the limits on sanction under section 19.

Related reading

• CBI v. R.R. Kishore: section 6A of the DSPE Act struck down as void ab initio
• Vijay Rajmohan v. State (CBI): the time limit on sanction under section 19

Sources

• Neeraj Dutta v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi), primary judgment PDF, 15 December 2022 (LiveLaw)
• LiveLaw report on the Constitution Bench decision
• Bar & Bench report on Neeraj Dutta v. State (NCT of Delhi)