Mere presence of a public servant when a senior officer allegedly accepts a bribe is not sufficient to infer criminal conspiracy, the Supreme Court has ruled.A Bench of Justice Pankaj Mithal (since retired)  and Justice Prasanna B Varale exonerated three Central Excise officers accused of participating in a bribery conspiracy as it dismissed appeals filed by the State of Uttar Pradesh against an Allahabad High Court judgment acquitting them.“The conspiracy cannot be inferred merely on the basis of suspicion or association and that there must be cogent material indicating meeting of minds between the accused persons. To establish a charge of conspiracy, knowledge about indulgence in either an illegal act or a legal act by illegal means is necessary. The offence is complete when there is a meeting of minds.”, the Bench noted.“In the case at hand, except alleging presence of the respondents at certain places during the relevant period, the prosecution has failed to produce any substantive evidence indicating prior agreement or concert between the respondents and the principal accused R.K. Srivastava.”, the top court said.The case dates back to 1995 when the CBI laid a trap in which Superintendent of Central Excise R.K. Srivastava allegedly demanded a Rs 80,000 bribe for returning documents seized from a factory. Srivastava’s juniors — Inspectors AK Gaba, Alok Gupta and Dushyant Kumar – who were present during the alleged demand or acceptance of the bribe – were charged with criminal conspiracy and certain provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.They were convicted by trial court but the Allahabad High Court acquitted them holding that the prosecution failed to establish demand, acceptance and conspiracy with regard to the bribe allegedly taken by Srivastava.Upholding the high court’s decision to acquit the trio, the Supreme Court held that the offence of criminal conspiracy under Section 120B IPC was not established.Writing the judgment for the Bench, Justice Varale concluded that the prosecution failed to establish the prior meeting of minds between the accused persons, to make them liable for criminal conspiracy, as mere presence during the alleged acceptance of a bribe by the superior official would not be sufficient to hold them guilty of criminal conspiracy.Except alleging the presence of the respondents at certain places during the relevant period, the prosecution failed to produce any substantive evidence showing a prior agreement or concert between them and the principal accused, the top court said.