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New Delhi: When the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a closure report on December 17, 2014 clearing former coal secretary H.C. Gupta of any wrongdoing in the Bander coal block allocation, the investigating agency had concluded, on the basis of its own enquiry, that there was insufficient evidence against him. The trial court disagreed. Invoking section 319 of the CrPC, it summoned Gupta as a co-accused during trial, a power that allows judges to arraign persons against whom evidence emerges in the course of proceedings.

On Friday (March 27), after an 11-year trial, special judge Sunena Sharma acquitted Gupta with a formulation rarely seen in criminal judgments: “this court owes a duty to mention that H.C. Gupta … has been honourably acquitted for lack of any evidence for the alleged charges framed against him”.

Gupta’s position across the coal block prosecutions is complex. He has been convicted in several other coal cases, including those involving JLD Yavatmal Energy, Kamal Sponge Steel and Power, and Vini Iron and Steel Udyog, with appeals pending before the Delhi high court. He was discharged in the Mednirai coal block case in April 2025 and acquitted in the Mahugarhi case in June 2025.

The Bander acquittal, with its pointed “honourably acquitted” language, thus adds another layer to a legal trajectory that has produced starkly divergent outcomes across different cases before different judges. It is the reasoning of this particular verdict, running to 287 pages, that merits close analysis.

The Gupta acquittal is one strand of a judgment in CBI v. Manoj Kumar Jayaswal & Ors. that acquits all five accused who stood trial: former Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, his son Devendra Darda, businessman Manoj Kumar Jayaswal, AMR Iron and Steel Pvt Ltd, and Gupta. Two other accused, former minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia and section officer L.S. Janoti, had been discharged in 2019 before charges were framed.

The judgment is worth attention for three doctrinal contributions that extend beyond the facts of this case: its treatment of a repealed anti-corruption provision, its reasoning on the evidentiary value of unsigned documents and its analysis of what constitutes a “valuable thing” under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

A repealed provision and a higher bar for conviction

The most consequential doctrinal question concerns section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, under which Gupta was charged. This provision criminalised a public servant who, while holding........

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