A Rs 100 bribe has proved extraordinarily costly for a former railway parcel clerk—not just his job, but three decades of legal struggle and, ultimately, another stint in prison. Now 75 and battling age-related ailments, he will once again have to surrender to serve the jail term in a case that began with a Rs 100 trap in 1995.
The Jharkhand High Court has upheld the conviction of Kali Shankar Dhobi in the bribery case but, taking note of the more than three-decade-long legal ordeal, his advanced age, age-related illness and the fact that he was a first-time offender, reduced his sentence to the minimum prescribed punishment.
Dhobi, then a parcel clerk at Hatia railway station, was accused of demanding Rs 100 from a man who had approached him to book a motorcycle to Samastipur. The official booking charge was Rs 203. The CBI laid a trap on April 27, 1995, and alleged that Dhobi was caught accepting a Rs 100 note.
The case, however, moved at a glacial pace. The trial court finally convicted him in 2004—nine years after the trap—and sentenced him to one year and 1.5 years of rigorous imprisonment under the Prevention of Corruption Act, with the sentences to run concurrently. His appeal then remained pending for more than two decades.
Justice Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, while pronouncing judgment on September 10, 2026, declined to interfere with the conviction but found the sentence disproportionate in view of the extraordinary delay. The High Court accordingly reduced the one-year rigorous imprisonment under Section 7 to six months’ simple imprisonment, and the 1.5-year rigorous imprisonment under Section 13(2) to one year’s simple imprisonment.
Author
Related Stories
Most Read
- 1Argentina’s ‘Vanishing Sea’: Rare Low Tide
- 2Effect of the 12 August 2026 Solar Eclipse on the 12 Zodiac Signs, Know Who Will Benefit and Who Will Have to Be Careful
- 3HC finds peon’s dismissal over tea and biscuits amounted to ‘injustice’
- 4Brace for 29 June: a Capricorn Full Moon, Mercury retrograde and Jupiter’s leap into Leo
- 5Japan Coach’s Whiteboard Tactics Go Viral at FIFA World Cup
