Summary
The Court affirmed Neera Yadav’s corruption conviction for abusing her NOIDA office to secure and enlarge property allotments for herself and her daughters. It reduced imprisonment from three to two years on the stated mitigating circumstances but refused concurrency with the sentence in a separate transaction involving Rajiv Kumar.
Issues
- Whether the allotment and conversion evidence established abuse of public office for valuable advantage.
- Whether sentences in the separate corruption cases should run concurrently and whether the term warranted reduction.
Provisions considered
- Section 13(1)(d), with Section 13(2), as applicable to the offences, Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988The alternatives concerning corrupt or illegal means, abuse of office and obtaining advantage without public interest are disjunctive; satisfying a relevant alternative constitutes misconduct. (¶ 15)
Held
- The evidence proved manipulation of an incomplete, late application, favourable conversion and enlargement, layout changes benefiting the appellant, and irregular shop and residential allotments in her dependent daughters’ names. These were proved abuses securing valuable benefits, beyond mere procedural defects. (¶¶ 19–30, 35–49, 58)
- Concurrency under Section 427 CrPC is judicial discretion governed by the offences and total circumstances; there is no rigid formula. Separate transactions do not enjoy the ordinary single-transaction justification, although appropriate exceptional orders remain possible. Concurrency was unjustified for these two distinct corruption transactions. (¶ 65–69)
- The age of the occurrence, consequences for service benefits, surrender of the plot and building and undertaking not to seek refund justified reducing imprisonment to two years. The conviction remained intact. (¶ 70–71)
Result
Appeal partly allowed: conviction confirmed, imprisonment reduced from three years to two years, and request for concurrent running with the separate-case sentence rejected.