BENGALURU: Taking serious exception to rampant corruption prevailing in public offices, particularly in sub-registrar’s offices, the Lokayukta special court sentenced Sub-Registrar Bhaskar Siddaramappa Chour to undergo three years’ rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 5 lakh as charges of him receiving bribes to register a site were proved.
Judge KM Radhakrishna sentenced Bhaskar, who was the sub-registrar at Chikkajala in Bengaluru, for the offence punishable under Section 7(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The judge said that Bhaskar received the bribe in the computer room as there was a CCTV camera in his chamber. When alerted about the trap, Bhaskar threw the money out of the window, the judge added.
Refusing to show leniency to the accused, as sought by the counsel, the judge said, “I may not be wrong to say that the public servants like the accused are doing the business in the name of official function. The uninterrupted corrupt activities through the middlemen and agents have created the poisonous atmosphere in and around where the public are fighting and searching for the pure air to breathe as silent spectators”.
The complainant in the case, HM Jagadish, had complained to the then Anti-Corruption Bureau on April 5, 2019 about Bhaskar seeking bribes. He had also presented a recorded conversation with Bhaskar. ACB officials laid a trap and arrested Bhaskar, while he was receiving a bribe of Rs 15,000 from Jagadish out of Rs 25,000 he had demanded to register a sale deed for a 30x40 sqft site.
Along with Bhaskar, Girish PR, a private individual working as a deed writer on the premises of the sub-registrar’s office, was also arrested and charged, but the court acquitted him.
During the recording of evidence, the complainant turned hostile and narrated a different story. The court noted that the conduct of the complainant, who is literate, reflects how clever he was in giving false evidence to mislead the court. The court agreed with the prosecution that he had purposefully turned hostile which would not be fatal to the case.