AHMEDABAD: Cleared of a Rs 20 bribery charge after a 30-year legal battle, an Ahmedabad police constable breathed his last as an innocent man.
Babubhai Prajapati, then posted as a constable in Vejalpur, Ahmedabad, was booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act over a bribe of just Rs 20 in 1996. A chargesheet followed in 1997. By 2002, charges were formally framed. Witness examinations began in 2003, and in 2004, the Sessions Court convicted him.
That conviction changed everything. The uniform stayed on his body, but the honour was stripped away. Promotions stopped. Benefits froze. Life shrank into courtrooms and dates.
Refusing to accept the verdict, Prajapati approached the Gujarat High Court in 2004 and then waited.
Arguing his case, advocate Nitin Gandhi pointed out glaring contradictions in witness testimonies and procedural lapses that had gone ignored. The High Court finally agreed.
On February 4, 2026 exactly 30 years after the case began the court acquitted Babubhai Prajapati, holding that the prosecution had failed to prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt.
After the verdict, Prajapati walked into his lawyer’s office not as an accused, but as a free man.
Advocate Gandhi advised him to immediately apply for the government benefits and service dues that had been stalled for years.
With quiet finality, the constable said words that now echo painfully: “Sir, the stain of my life has been removed. Now it would be better if God calls me to Him.”
Those words were not metaphorical. The next morning, Babubhai Prajapati passed away due to natural causes.
Recounting the moment, advocate Nitin Gandhi said to local media, “When I met him, he was genuinely happy after the acquittal. I told him to apply for pending benefits. He replied, ‘Sir, I have been acquitted. Now may God call me to Him.’ The next day, when I tried calling him to hand over the papers, I was informed that he had died.”
The case itself stemmed from a 1997 ACB trap near Vishala in the Vejalpur area, where three constables were accused of taking bribes from truck drivers. All were convicted in 2004. All appealed. But for Babubhai Prajapati, freedom arrived too late.