By IANS
Lucknow : While hearing a petition against the greasing of palms for securing a government job, the Allahabad High Court said that giving and accepting bribe are equally illegal.
“Succumbing to the demand for bribe is as unlawful as the demand itself. Those who give bribe in exchange of some favour were as much responsible for the committing of crime as those who accept bribes,” Justice A.P. Sahi observed while hearing the bail petition of an accused in a bribery case Friday.
The judge directed the principal home secretary as well as the director general of police to issue necessary instructions to all concerned police officers to also take bribe givers into the ambit of their investigations.
In a joint petition, four people alleged that they had paid Rs.90,000 each to one Tapas Kumar Chakravarty and his wife Gopa who had promised to get them government jobs.
However, the petitioners – Pradeep Kumar Yadav, Jitendra Singh, Shailendra Singh and Kuldeep Singh – said they neither got the jobs nor was the money returned to them.
Sahi directed the police to take action against the petitioners in the same manner as they had done against the accused.
“People who gave bribe to get a job clearly motivated others to adopt the same means as those who took the bribe. This disease needs to be checked or else it would play havoc with the lives of helpless unemployed youth as well as their families,” he said.