Ranchi: Jharkhand high court has ended a 33-year-old bribery case involving a BCCL clerk caught accepting Rs 300 in 1993.Justice Pradeep Kumar Srivastava upheld the conviction but reduced the two-year jail term to the period already served — one month and one day. The judgment was delivered on Aug 20 and released on Tuesday.The court said the appellant had endured the “trauma of trial” for more than three decades. It also noted that he had deposited Rs 5,000 as a bail condition and paid Rs 7,000 in fines.The appellant was then a fund clerk at BCCL’s Basudeopur colliery in Dhanbad. Loader Ramdhari Harijan had approached him to process documents for payment of provident fund dues. The clerk demanded Rs 300.Harijan complained to the CBI in Dhanbad. A trap was laid and the clerk was caught accepting the money on March 22, 1993.After examining eight witnesses, the trial court convicted him on Feb 26, 2005, sentencing him to two years of rigorous imprisonment and a Rs 1,000 fine under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
