AHMEDABAD: A former police constable died a day after the Gujarat high court acquitted him in a corruption case that had dragged on for nearly three decades. Babubhai Prajapati, 64, was cleared on Wednesday of charges stemming from a 1996 case in which he was accused of accepting a bribe of Rs 20 from a truck driver.The case began on Nov 20, 1996, when Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials laid a trap after receiving a complaint that policemen were collecting Rs 20 from truck drivers to allow their vehicles to enter the city illegally. Three constables of Vejalpur police station. — Prajapati, Sevenkumar Rathwa and Nasrullah Khan — were booked for allegedly accepting money.In 2004, a trial court convicted all three and sentenced them to four years in prison. The constables subsequently lost their jobs. The trio challenged the verdict in the Gujarat high court, but their appeals remained pending for over two decades. On Wednesday, Justice S V Pinto delivered the judgment, acquitting all three constables nearly 30 years after the alleged incident. Prajapati, who had been living in Ahmedabad, relocated to his hometown in Patan district during the prolonged legal battle. On Thursday morning, after learning of the acquittal, Prajapati visited his lawyer, Nitin Gandhi. Gandhi said, they discussed possible legal steps to recover service-related dues since Prajapati’s employment had been terminated in 2004. However, Prajapati was not keen on initiating further proceedings. That night Prajapati stayed at his nephew’s house. On Friday morning, Gandhi learned that Prajapati had died in his sleep. The other two constables, Rathwa and Khan, also saw their decades-long legal ordeal come to an end with Wednesday’s ruling.
