14 years on, 1,600 bribe gets ITI clerk three years in jail

Ahmedabad: Fourteen years after he was caught accepting a bribe of Rs 1,600, a senior clerk of ITI Modasa was sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment by a local court.The court of the second additional sessions judge, Modasa, on Thursday, convicted Bhogilal Patel, then a Class-III senior clerk at ITI Modasa, in a case registered by the Sabarkantha ACB police station in 2011 under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 3,000 on the convict.
According to the order, Patel was awarded three years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,000 under Section 7 of the Act. In default of payment, he will have to undergo an additional six months of simple imprisonment. He was further sentenced to one year's rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 2,000. The sentences will run concurrently.The case dates back to July 2011, when the complainant, an instructor associated with an ITI course run through Samarpan Education Trust in Talod in Sabarkantha, approached the accused for examination receipts of 23 students. The clerk allegedly demanded Rs 200 per student, totalling Rs 4,600, and threatened that the students' results would suffer if the amount was not paid.The complainant initially paid Rs 3,000 and later approached the Anti-Corruption Bureau. Acting on the complaint, the ACB laid a trap on July 30, 2011. Patel was caught red-handed while accepting the remaining Rs 1,600 in the presence of panch witnesses. After considering oral and documentary evidence during the trial, the court pronounced the final order, bringing the long-pending corruption case to a close.