assistance of Sri Yashpal Kapur, a Gazetted Officer in the Government of India for the furtherance of her election prospects inasmuch as Shri Yashpal Kapur was made to go to Rae Bareli on 7-1-1971 and deliver a speech at Shaheed Mela in Munshiganj canvassing support for her candidature". 414. Now, it is a well settled rule repeatedly laid down by this Court that allegations of corrupt practice in the course of an election must be judged by the same standards as a criminal charge. And no rule of evidence in judging guilt on a criminal charge is more firmly rooted than no charge resting on circumstantial evidence could be held to be proved beyond reasonable doubt unless the chain of circumstances is so complete and so connected with the charge that it leaves no other reasonable hypothesis open for the Court to adopt except that the offender had committed the offence alleged (See e.g. Smt. Om Praha Jain v. Charan Das AIR 1975 SC 1417 at p. 1426). 415. The learned Judge dealt with evidence on issue No. 1 relating to the activities of Shri Yashpal Kapur by dividing it into three periods (1) from 2712-1970 to 13-1-1971 when Shri Kapur had not resigned from Govt. service (2) from 14-1-1971 to 25-1-1971 the period after Shri Kapur's resignation upto its acceptance by the President of India evidenced by a notification dated 25-1-1971; (3) from 26-1-1971 to 6-2-1971 the period after the acceptance of Shri Kapur's resignation and upto the date of the publication of it in the Official Gazette. The learned Judge considered only the first two periods material as he held the activities in the third period to be above board because Shri Kapur was free to do what he liked in this period. Hence the fact that the original respondent appointed Shri Kapur her election agent on 1-2- 1971 made no difference to the result in the third period. But we will find that a very glaring feature of the findings relating to the first two periods is that the original respondent is held vicariously responsible without anything beyond the activities of Shri Yashpal Kapur and his position as an Officer on Special Duty in the Prime Minister's Secretariat to justify the inference that he had an express or implied authorisation on direction from the Prime Minister to do anything in general or in particular on her behalf for her election. 416. Let us take the first period. What was required to be approved, beyond all reasonable doubt from the evidence on record on this part of the case, was that Shri Yashpal Kapur had been instructed or directed by the original respondent to render the help if any, that he did give by the speech he was alleged to have made at a fair at Shaheed Mela (Martyrs fair) at Munshiganj in Rae Bareli on 7-1-1971, canvassing support for the original respondent's election – an allegation which Shri Yashpal Kapur had denied in so far as any mention of the original respondent's candidature is concerned. Shri Kapur admitted that he had gone there with Shri Gulzarilal Nanda, a former Minister of the Central Government but said that he had only, when called upon to do so paid his tribute to the memory of the martyrs. 417. The learned Judge held that the recollection of Shri Yashpal Kapur about what he said at the Shaheed Mela on 7-1-1971 was less reliable than the statement of Shri Vidya Shankar Yadav (P.W. 43), an Advocate belonging