TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1954 (3) TMI 63
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....The Judicial Commissioner reversed the order of acquittal passed by the Special Judge and convicted both the appellants of the several offences with which they were charged. The Judicial Commissioner awarded to the appellant No. 1 a sentence of 3 years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 2,000 in default rigorous imprisonment of 9 months under section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and a sentence of three years' rigorous imprisonment under section 161 of the Indian Penal Code, both the sentences to run concurrently. He imposed no sentence upon the appellant No. 1 under sections 465 and 466 of the Indian Penal Code. He awarded to the appellant No. 2 a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for one year and a fine of Re. 1,000 and in default rigorous imprisonment for nine months under section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code. He did not award any separate sentence to appellant No. 2 under section 161 of the Indian Penal Code. On an application made to the Judicial 'Commissioner, Rewa, for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court the Judicial Commissioner granted the appellants leave to appeal under article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution in regard to the four points of law raised in the case....
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....eral applications for procuring the cancellation of the said order and on the 13th January, 1949, and the 26th January, 1949, Pannalal made two applications and handed them over personally to the appellant No. I requesting for the resumption of the mining operations and was asked to come in February for the purpose. The appellant No. I consulted the legal advisers of the State and a questionnaire was framed which was to be addressed to the syndicate for its answers. When Pannalal went to Rewa the questionnaire. was handed over to him on the 9th February, 1949, for being sent to Sir Chinubbai Sir Chinubhai sent the replies to the said questionnaire along with a covering letter dated the 18th February, 1949, wherein he expressed a desire to meet the appellant No. 1 for personal discussion in regard to the settlement of the matter of the resumption of the mining operations etc. In reply to the telegrams sent by Sir Chinubhai on the 19th February, 1949, the Personal Assistant to appellant No. 1 intimated to Sir Chinubhai that he could go to Rewa and see the appellant No. 1 on the 7th March, 1949. As Sir Chinubhai was ill he deputed his Personal Assistant, Nagindas Mehta to go to Rewa a....
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....icate and reached Delhi on the 5th April, 1949. On the 6th April, 1949, the appellant No. 1 sent a telegram through his Personal Assistant Mukherji to Sir Chinubhai at Bombay asking him to meet the appellant No. I on the 7th, 8th or 9th April, 1949, at 31 Constitution House for final talks regarding the Panna Diamond Mining Syndicate. On receipt of the said telegram Sir Chinubhai sent a telegram in reply stating that his Personal Assistant, Nagindas and Pannalal were reaching Delhi on the 9th April, 1949. Nagindas reached Delhi on the 8th April, 1949, and put up at the Maidens Hotel and Pannalal reached Delhi on the 10th April, 1949, and put up at the Regal Hotel. On the 9th April, 1949, Nagindas informed the appellant No. I on the telephone about his arrival at Delhi and an appointment was fixed for 10-30 am. on the 10th April, 1949 Nagindas contacted Shri.Bambawala, the inspector General of Police of the Special Police Establishment on the morning of the 10th April, 1949, before, coming to meet the appellant No. I and told him how the appellant No. 1 was coercing him to pay a bribe. Shri Bambawala referred Nagindas to Pandit Dhanraj, Superintendent, Special Police Establishment, ....
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.... night. Nagindas and Pandit Dhanraj then proceeded to the house of Shri Shanti Lal Ahuja, Additional District Magistrate. Pandit Dhanraj made arrangements for a raiding party. Nagindas's statement was recorded on oath and a search of his person was made and he was then given three bundles containing 250 Government currency notes of Rs. 100 and a memorandum of the same was also prepared. After these formalities were gone through Pandit Dhanraj, Nagindas and the Additional District Magistrate along with the police party left for the Constitution House. It was arranged that Pannalal should be sent out by Nagindas after the completion of the transaction, on some pretext or other to the taxi waiting outside and that this would serve as a signal for the raiding party which would rush into the room No. 31 Constitution House which was occupied by the appellant No. 1. Nagindas then went inside the suit of rooms occupied by the appellant No. 1 and the appellant No. 1 took him to his bedroom and closed the door which connected the bedroom with the sitting room where Pannalal was already waiting. After this the appellant -No. 1 handed over the resumption order to Nagindas and on reading the sa....
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....kari, who was a member of the Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Works;, Mines and Power, Government of India, and Shri Perulakar, who was the Minister for Agriculture and Labour, Madhya Bharat, were brought to the bedroom of the appellant No. 1 by the police. The appellant No. 1 repeated the said statement and gave the same explanation before these two witnesses which he had given and made before the Additional District Magistrate and Pandit Dhanraj a little while before. Nagindas was then searched in the presence of these two witnesses and the two copies of the order which had been given to him by appellant No. I were recovered from his person. Two other copies of the said order and the application and the file of the Panna Diamond Mining syndicate were recovered from the. search of the upper drawer of, the dressing table in the bedroom of appellant No. I Appellant No. 1 also produced a receipt in support of his story of the purchase of the car. The relevant memos of the search were prepared and also a list of the numbers of the Government currency notes of Rs. 25,000 which had been produced by the appellant No. 1. This list was compared and checked by the said witnesses ....
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....Magistrate, also lent himself to the. police authorities and became almost a limb of the police. His position as the Additional District Magistrate was submerged and he reduced himself to the position of an ordinary witness taking part in the affair as a member of the raiding. party and his evidence could be no better or no worse than that of the police witnesses themselves. If therefore the matter had rested merely upon their evidence it would have been difficult to carry the guilt home to the appellant No. 1. The evidence as to the recovery of this sum of Rs. 25,000 from the top drawer of the dressing table in the bedroom of the appellant No. I and also in regard to the handing over of that sum by the appellant No. I to Shanti Lal Ahuja, the Additional District Magistrate, was equally tainted and if that evidence stood by itself no court would have been safe in acting upon the same. The statement which was made by the appellant No. I to Shanti Lal Ahuja, the Additional District Magistrate, was inadmissible in evidence. Section 162 of the Criminal Procedure Code rendered the statement made by the appellant No. I to the police officers inadmissible. The investigation into the offen....
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....anraj had recorded their statements after they had left the bedroom of the appellant No. I at the Constitution House relying upon his memory of the events that had happened that night. These statements however were not read over to them and therefore could not have the value which otherwise they would have had. The other criticism was that they had appended their signatures to the Panchnama of the numbers of the currency, notes recovered at that time which Panchnama contained the statement that on being asked the appellant No. I had produced the bundles of currency notes from the top drawer of the dressing table. This statement was not factually correct as both these witnesses were brought into the bedroom of the appellant No. I after the recovery of the Government currency notes by the police from the appellant No., 1. It was certainly indiscreet on their part not to have scrutinized the contents of the Panchnama before they appended their signatures thereto. That is however a far cry from coming to the conclusion that they acted in a highly irresponsible manner and their testimony was unreliable. The circumstances under which the numbers of the currency notes were recorded in the....
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....o as to avoid the bar of section 164. Reliance was placed in this behalf on A.I.R. 1940 Lahore 129 (Full Bench) where it was held that if on the facts of any case it was found that a statement made to a third person was in reality intended to be made to the police and was represented as having been made to a third person merely as a colourable pretence in order to avoid the provisions of section 162 the court would hold it excluded by the section. The same ratio it was submitted applied to the statements made to these two witnesses because they were a colourable pretence to avoid the provisions of section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code which had certainly not been complied with by Shanti Lal Ahuja, the Additional District Magistrate. It has however to be observed that every statement made to a person assisting the police durirng an investigation cannot be treated as a statement made to the police or to the Magistrate and as such excluded by section 162 or section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The question is one of fact and has got to be determined having regard to the circumstances of each case. On a scrutiny- of the evidence of these two witnesses and the circumstance....
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....either at the instance Nagindas as alleged by the appellant No. 1 or at, the instance of the appellant No. 1 as alleged by the prosecution the appellant No. 1 did not express any surprise at these moneys being thus found there. If the version of the appellant No. 1 was correct he had only brought about Rs. 25,000 from his house. Rs. 15,000 has been already spent by him in the purchase of the car., About Rs. 10,600 were spent by him in the purchase of the ornaments and only a sum of Rs. 100 odd was the, balance left with him. According to that version there was not the slightest possibility of the sum of Rs. 25,000 being found in the top drawer of the dressing table. Far from expressing a surprise in this manner the appellant No. 1 claimed these moneys as his own. The appellant No. 1 could -not have by any mischance failed to appreciate that these Government currency notes which were thus recovered from the to the drawer of the dressing table exceeded by far the amount which according to him he had left with him by way of balance and the most natural reaction to the recovery of this large sum of money would . have been that he would have certainly denied that these moneys were his ....
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..... 1 who occupied the position of the Minister of Industries in the State of Vindhya Pradesh. They therefore provided the sum of Rs. 25,000 on their own and handed it over to Nagindas. The police authorities in this step which they took showed greater enthusiasm than Nagindas himself in the matter of trapping the .appellant No. 1. It may be that the detection of corruption may sometimes call for the laying of traps, but there is no justification for the police authorities to bring about the taking of a bribe by supplying the bribe money to the giver where he has neither got it nor has the capacity to find it for himself. It is the duty of the police authorities to prevent crimes being committed. It is no part of their business to provide the instruments of the offence. We cannot too strongly disapprove of the step which the police authorities took in this case in the matter of providing the sum of Rs. 25,000 to Nagindas who but for police authorities thus coming to his aid would never have been able to bring the whole Affair to its culmination. Not only did the police authorities thus become active parties in the matter of trapping the appellant No. I they also provided a handy and....
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....articular case does not himself try that case. This practice is all the more indefensible here specially when there is no separation of the executive from the judiciary. . The basic merit of the administration of criminal justice in the State lies in the fact that the person arrested by the police is entitled to come before an independent and impartial Magistrate who is expected to deal with the case without the Magistrate himself being in any way a partisan or a witness to police activities. There is another danger and that is the Magistrates are put in the unenviable and embarrassing position of having to give evidence as a witness and then being disbelieved. That is not the Way to secure respect for the Magistracy charged with the administration of justice. In my judgment this is a practice which is unfair to the accused and unfair to, the Magistrates. It is also unfair to the police. Because charged with the high responsibility and duty of performing a great and essential public service of this State the police cannot afford to -run the risk of opprobrium' even if unfounded, that they have enlisted the Magistrate in their cause. That risk -is too great and involves forfeiting p....