IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA Cr.Misc. No.38121 of 2009 SANJAY KUMAR, son of Bateshwar Das, resident of village Belthu, P.S. Shahkund, District Bhagalpur Versus STATE OF BIHAR ----------- 3. 24.11.2009 Heard counsel for the petitioner and the counsel for the State. The petitioner faces prosecution for offence u/s 387 I.P.C. with a specific allegation that he was putting pressure, causing threat and in fact was determined to extract money from the informant Postmaster in the payments to be made by the informant for the scheme of Narega. Mr. Krishna Mohan, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner, would submit that the whole story given by the informant seems to be unbelievable because earlier part of the incident allegedly taking place a month’s earlier was never reported to the police by the informant. He would also submit that the statement of the two witnesses Arun Goswami, the Postal Assistant and Chamak Lal Yadav, the co- villager and in fact Bataidar of the informant would not inspire confidence, inasmuch as the same was recorded after five 2 months of the occurrence. In the opinion of this Court the petitioner, who is said to be a Panchayat Sewak, could not have been subjected to such false accusation by the informant if there was no such threat given by the letter. The payment definitely was to be made through the Post Office and the role of Panchayat Sewak in getting such payment in a Narega scheme being absolutely not known to the authorities, if the petitioner was trying to extract money from the informant, a fact which gets support from the statement of the two witnesses in paragraphs 27 and 29, the same cannot be altogether disbelieved only because the police could record the statement of these two persons after five months of the occurrence. The informant in fact was quite specific in the F.I.R. and this Court would fail to understand as to why the informant will falsely implicate the petitioner when there were a number of persons available in the Panchayat where Narega scheme was being carried out. Considering all these aspects and increasing trend of such activities even on 3 the part of the Government servants of becoming rich over night, this Court for the time being is not inclined to grant bail to the petitioner taking into account that he has remained in custody hardly for a period of two months. Thus, while rejecting the bail of the petitioner for the present this Court would give liberty to the petitioner to renew his prayer for bail after completing six further months of his judicial custody. (Mihir Kumar Jha,J.) Surendra/