Patna High Court
Phuleshwar Rajak vs The State Of Bihar Through Vigilance … on 23 July, 2026
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.36763 of 2025
Arising Out of PS. Case No.-39 Year-2022 Thana- VIGILANCE District- Patna
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Phuleshwar Rajak son of Madhu Rajak Resident Of Mohalla -Bishunpurdatt,
Ps -Purnea, Dist- Purnea
... ... Petitioner/s
Versus
The State of Bihar Through Vigilance Department, Bihar, Patna Bihar
... ... Opposite Party/s
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Appearance :
For the Petitioner/s : Mr.Baidyanath Prasad, Advocate
For the Opposite Party/s : Mr.Arvind Kumar, Advocate
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CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ANSUL
CAV JUDGMENT
Date : 23-07-2026
Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and learned
APP for the State.
2. This application has been filed for quashing of the
order dated 14.11.2024 passed by the learned Special Judge,
Vigilance, Bhagalpur in Special Case (Vig) No. 19 of 2022,
whereby cognizance was taken against the petitioner and one Hem
Chandra Lal Karan for offences under Sections 7(a)/7(b)/7(c)/12
of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, as amended in 2018,
arising out of Vigilance P.S. Case No. 39 of 2022 dated
02.08.2022.
3
. The petitioner was posted as Junior Engineer, Rural
Works Department, Work Division, Araria. The allegation, briefly,
is that one Shiv Kumar Verma, a contractor who had built a bridge
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over the Bhirbhiri drain under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak
Yojana, approached the petitioner for release of his final bill, and
that the petitioner along with the co-accused, the Sub Divisional
Officer, demanded illegal gratification of Rs 40,000 and Rs 62,000
respectively as their share for clearing the bill. The complainant,
unwilling to pay, approached the Vigilance Department.
Verification was carried out, a trap was laid on 02.08.2022, and the
petitioner was apprehended with the tainted currency, the sodium
carbonate solution test turning positive on his hand wash.
4. Learned counsel for the petitioner has taken me
through the petition at some length. Drawing attention to the pre-
trap memorandum forming part of the case diary, it is submitted
that the two independent witnesses cited by the prosecution,
Abhishek Kumar and Rana Kumar, have not supported the
allegation of demand, and that the voice recording annexed by the
petitioner himself as Annexure P/2 nowhere records a specific
demand of Rs 40,000 in so many words. This, according to learned
counsel, is fatal to the very foundation of the case. The final bill of
the contractor, it is pointed out, had already been cleared through
online CFMS payment on 06.07.2022, well before the FIR was
lodged on 08.07.2022. Nothing remained, on this submission, for
the petitioner to demand a bribe for. The entire case is said to be an
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afterthought engineered after the petitioner was taken to the
Circuit House, Araria.
5. Learned APP opposes the petition. A bare reading of
the transcript at Annexure P/2, filed by the petitioner himself,
records a running conversation between the petitioner and the
complainant in which figures of Rs 15 lakhs, Rs 17 lakhs and
eventually Rs 62,000 are discussed with reference to security
money and commission on the bill. Whether these figures relate to
the transaction alleged in the FIR is, on this submission, a matter
for evidence and not something this Court can resolve while sitting
in quashing jurisdiction on the strength of annexures alone.
6. This Court has gone through the FIR, the pre-trap and
post-trap material so far as traceable from the annexures, and the
order impugned. It is by now well settled in the case of Central
Bureau of Investigation v. Aryan Singh reported in 2023 SCC
OnLine SC 379 that at the stage of quashing this Court does not sit
as a court of appeal over the sufficiency of evidence, nor does it
conduct what amounts to a mini trial, and the enquiry stops at
whether sufficient material exists warranting a trial. Dealing
specifically with prosecutions under the Prevention of Corruption
Act, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has gone further still in State of
Chattisgarh & Anr. v. Aman Kumar Singh & Ors., reported in
Patna High Court CR. MISC. No.36763 of 2025 dt.23-07-2026
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(2023) 6 SCC 559, holding that a court exercising quashing
jurisdiction is not justified in embarking upon an enquiry into the
probability, reliability or genuineness of the allegations at the
threshold, and that High Courts would do well to maintain a
hands-off approach in corruption cases since the considerations
applicable to general criminal proceedings may not carry the same
force here. A High Court that had done otherwise was disapproved
of in strong terms, the Court observing that it had, in effect,
“sieved the complaint through a calendar of finest gauzes for
testing” the veracity of the allegation at a stage when such testing
was not its business. That is precisely the exercise learned counsel
for the petitioner invites this Court to undertake.
7. This is, at bottom, a trap case, and that changes
matters. Once tainted money is recovered from an accused
pursuant to a pre-arranged trap and the chemical test returns
positive, as it has here, a strong suspicion attaches to the accused
at the threshold which cannot be dislodged by pointing to gaps in
independent corroboration, or by parsing a voice recording line by
line to argue that no figure of exactly Rs 40,000 was uttered by the
petitioner in those words. The Calcutta High Court was faced with
much the same argument in Sandip Kumar Roy v. State of West
Bengal & Anr., CRR 3841 of 2017, decided on 17.03.2026, where
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a Deputy Excise Collector sought quashing of a trap case citing
absence of proof of demand and breach of departmental protocol.
The revisional application was dismissed, the shadow witness
account taken with the phenolphthalein hand wash and forensic
confirmation of tainted currency being held sufficient to send the
matter to trial. Whether the demand here was made in the precise
terms alleged, whether the recovery was stage managed as
suggested, whether Abhishek Kumar and Rana Kumar support or
do not support the prosecution when examined on oath, are all
questions going to proof. They can only be tested where evidence
is led, documents proved and witnesses cross examined. This
Court, exercising limited and summary jurisdiction under Section
528 of the BNSS, cannot enter into that terrain at this stage.
8. As already noted above, the fact that final payment
had by then been released online does not by itself demolish the
prosecution case at this stage. The case set up is that the demand
preceded and ran alongside the release of that very payment,
tracked through a series of meetings between 04.07.2022 and
02.08.2022, and this too is a matter requiring appreciation of
evidence.
9. Learned counsel could not point to any circumstance
falling within the well recognised categories carved out for
exercise of quashing jurisdiction, absence of prima facie material,
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patent absurdity on the face of the record, or a manifest bar of law.
Asked, in the course of hearing, whether he could show a single
instance of this Court quashing a cognizance order in a trap case at
this threshold stage, learned counsel, fairly, could not.
10. In the result, this Court finds no ground to interfere
with the order dated 14.11.2024 passed by the learned Special
Judge, Vigilance, Bhagalpur in Special Case (Vig) No. 19 of 2022.
The petitioner shall be at liberty to raise all the pleas taken herein
before the trial court at the appropriate stage, including at the stage
of framing of charge, where they shall be considered on their own
merits, uninfluenced by anything said in this order. This Court has
expressed no opinion on the merits of the allegations and nothing
herein shall prejudice either side during trial.
11. The application stands rejected.
12. Interlocutory Application, if any, stands disposed of.
(Ansul, J)
amitkr/-
AFR/NAFR NAFR CAV DATE 26.05.2026 Uploading Date 28.07.2026 Transmission Date 28.07.2026
