Cuttack, Aug. 27: Orissa High Court has indicted Court of Special Judge (CBI), Bhubaneswar, for convicting a public servant for criminal breach of trust and corruption on the basis of "conjecture" and "suspicion".

The high court hauled up the CBI court for convicting and sentencing Maheswar Seth, a storekeeper at Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd's regional store at Bandhabahal in Jharsuguda district, to two years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 20,000 on November 26, 2008.

The trial court had awarded the sentence on the basis of charge sheet submitted by the CBI holding him responsible for missing of 10 electrical items and causing wrongful loss of Rs 6,12,250 to Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd.

Seth had challenged the CBI court order, pleading that the 10 electrical items went missing when he had been on casual leave between May 6 and 14, 2002 and one Upendra Prasad Nayak was in his charge. The appeal petition had been pending all these years till a single-judge bench set aside the order and acquitted Seth of the charges on August 21.

While setting aside the CBI court order, Justice S.K. Sahoo said: "The reasoning, assigned by the trial court in convicting the appellants, seems to be based on conjecture and suspicion, which have no place in the matter of legal proof of guilt of an accused in a criminal trial. Therefore, in view of the evidence available on record, I am not in a position to accept that the prosecution has established its case against the appellant beyond all reasonable doubt."

The trial court had convicted him as the entrustment part and the missing of the electrical items were proved, and the appellant, though was given an opportunity to submit his explanation for such shortage, had failed to do so.

"If the accused is taking a plea that in his absence, somebody else was in charge of the property, and immediately after his joining the missing of the property was detected and accordingly reported, it is the duty of the prosecution to prove that the period in which the other person was in charge of the property, there was no possibility of pilferage," Justice Sahoo said. "Similarly, if the accused is not in the exclusive control of the place where the properties were stored and others have access to such place, the possibility of others committing any pilferage of the properties are also to be ruled out."

He felt the prosecution had failed to successfully establish that Seth had committed misappropriation of entrusted articles and the trial court had overlooked any such aspect regarding access of others to the store and also to the missing articles when he had been on leave.

As Seth was on bail, the high court discharged him from the liability of his bail bond and cancelled the personal bond and the surety bond.

Senior citizens

Senior citizens will be able to register themselves online on the Senior Citizen Security Cell shortly by filling web application forms online, said Bhubaneswar-Cuttack police commissioner Y.B. Khurania.

The portal will be launched within a month.