' Afsar Ali, a Junior Clerk in the Office of Deputy Commissioner, Swabi is apprehended and refused bail by the forum below on charges under section 161, P.P.C. Read with section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act vide F.I.R. No,1, dated 22-1-2000 of the Anti-Corruption Establishment, Swabi, for accepting a bribe of Rs,500 from the complainant Ijaz Ahmed, who had volunteered to become a trap agent.
2. The background is to the effect that the complainant was a shopkeeper to whom flour quota of fifty bags daily used to be delivered. His quota was abolished and instead given to somebody else.
Accused was responsible for the distribution of quota and when resorted to for the needful, he demanded the bribe of Rs,500 and the remaining was to be paid after the needful.
3. It is not on record as to how a Junior Clerk in the Office of Deputy Commissioner could be responsible for the supply of quota and for stopping 'such supply. His position for exploiting the complainant remains yet to be determined at trial.
4. There is a visible tampering over the recovery memos. Prepared before as well as after the trap and hence it remains yet to be determined at trial as to who made the recoveries and who were the witnesses thereof. Till this serious documentary controversy is solved at trial, the petitioner is entitled to the benefit of doubt at the stage of bail.
5. The offence prima facie does not fall within the prohibitory clause of section 497, Cr.P.C. And the petitioner being a Government servant, is not likely to abscond. The application is accepted and the petitioner is directed to be released on bail provided a bond in a sum of Rs,1,00,000 (one lac) with two sureties each in the like amount is furnished to the satisfaction of learned Special Judge, Anti-Corruption.