(Top) Bangaru Laxman and Shakti Kapoor

New Delhi, July 21: Spy cameras may not sting any more.

In a ruling bound to affect cases like the Tehelka expos?, the Supreme Court today said such video clippings are “highly unsafe” to act upon and acquitted an engineer convicted for taking bribe.

The engineer, accused of taking Rs 500 from a person in Bihar to sanction supply of power to his farmlands, had moved the apex court after the trial court and Patna High Court upheld his sack order.

The complainant, an agriculturist, had claimed to have paid an advance of Rs 100 and informed police before paying the rest.

The police went with a “watcher” who, along with the accuser, reached the engineer’s house. While handing over the rest of the money, the watcher and the complainant, as planned, gave a signal to the police team waiting outside. The police later said they “caught the engineer red-handed”.

But the apex court said the evidence “fell short of the test of reliability and acceptability” and said vigilance departments should adopt proper procedures while laying a trap against public servants.

The electricity connection, Justices B.N. Aggarwal and Tarun Chatterjee ruled, was given much earlier than the day on which the alleged bribe was paid. The complainant, it added, had initiated the “trap case” to put the “appellant into trouble”.

The ruling could affect the outcome of the Tehelka case ? which scalped former BJP chief Bangaru Laxman who was shown accepting money from undercover reporters posing as arms dealers ? or the one involving his party colleague and former Union minister Dilip Singh Judeo.

Judeo, a front-runner for the post of chief minister in Chhattisgarh in 2003, bowed out of the race after a similar sting operation. Yesterday, the CBI told the apex court the Judeo tapes were a “plan” by Amit Jogi, the son of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi, to “disgrace” his father’s political rival just before the Assembly polls.

Actor Shakti Kapoor, who was shown on a television channel seeking sexual favours from a reporter who pretended to be on the lookout for a role, should also be breathing a bit easier.

While acquitting the engineer, the division bench said in a “trap case”, the duty of the vigilance officer to prove the allegations against a government officer for taking bribe is serious.

Therefore, vigilance officers must “seriously endeavour to secure really independent and respectable witnesses so that the evidence ? inspires confidence in the mind of the court”.