NEW DELHI : An accused arrested in India for accepting a bribe of one hundred rupees has been honorably acquitted after 39 years. According to Indian media reports, 84-year-old Jageshwar Prasad Awadhya, of Awadhyapara in Rai city in undivided Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in 1986 on charges of accepting a bribe of Rs 100. After almost 39 years, the court has acquitted him with honor. He worked as a clerk in the State Road Transport Corporation. Jageshwar Prasad Awadhya, who has become a symbol of the system’s indifference, delayed justice, and the broken hopes of man, says that this decision is now meaningless. My job is over. Society turned its back on me. They said that I could not educate my children, could not get them married, relatives cut off contact with me, my wife died due to lack of proper treatment. Now can anyone give me all this back? Jageshwar Prasad says that now the High Court has declared me innocent, but the weight of this certificate from the court is very less compared to the heavy burden that I have carried with my entire family for 39 years. He says that I have done nothing. But I had to lose everything. Now whom should I tell that I have done nothing? Now there is no one left to listen.
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