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PETITIONER: STATE OF RAJASTHAN

       Vs.

RESPONDENT: SUKHPAL SINGH & OTHERS

DATE OF JUDGMENT16/12/1982

BENCH: CHANDRACHUD, Y.V. ((CJ) BENCH: CHANDRACHUD, Y.V. ((CJ) TULZAPURKAR, V.D.

CITATION:  1984 AIR  207            1983 SCR  (2)  53  1983 SCC  (1) 393        1982 SCALE  (2)1328  CITATOR INFO :  D          1990 SC1359  (5)

ACT:      Evidence-Appreciation of-In  an appeal against order of acquittal by High Court.

HEADNOTE:      Seven or  eight armed dacoits entered a bank at Bayana, terrorised and  beat up its employees, looted currency notes worth Rs.  15, 253/-,  put the same in a black box and drove away with  the booty  in an  Ambassador car.  The F.I.R. was lodged within  half an  hour of  the  dacoity  and  wireless messages were  sent out  for interception  of the  car. Soon thereafter, an Ambassador car having seven persons seated in it and  being driven  in panic  arrived near  Weir from  the direction of Bayana and met with an accident. The police and the public  surrounded the  occupants of  the car  when they came out  but they  tried to  escape by  firing  from  their pistols. They  were chased  and arrested but not before some members of  the public  received injuries  on account of the firing. The prosecution case was that it was the respondents who looted  the bank, escaped in the car and were chased and arrested; that each of them was carrying a bundle of hundred currency notes of Rs. 10/- each; that the black box found in the car  contained currency  notes of the value of Rs. 6,800 belonging to  the looted  bank; and that live cartridges and knives had been recovered from the possession of some of the respondents. At  the trial,  the respondents  admitted  that they had  been arrested near Weir but denied any hand in the dacoity.  The   Sessions  Judge   rejected  their  plea  and convicted them under s. 395, I.P.C.      The High  Court  acquitted  the  respondents  on  three grounds: (i)  that the  evidence regarding identification of the respondents  was not convincing as some of the witnesses who had  identified  the  dacoits  in  jail  had  failed  to identify them before the trial court; (ii) that the evidence regarding recovery  of stolen property was not acceptable as the  recovery   memos  were  not  genuine,  the  knives  and cartridges had  not been  produced before the court, and the story that  each of  the respondents  was carrying  currency notes worth  Rs. 1000 while running away after leaving a sum of Rs.  6,800 in the black box was unnatural; and (iii) that

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the allegation  that the  respondents  had  escaped  in  the Ambassador car  and had  come out  of that  car after it met with an  accident was  not acceptable  in the  absence of an entry relating to the number of the car in the General Diary of the Police.      Allowing the appeal, ^      HELD: If  two views  of the  evidence  were  reasonably possible in  this appeal by special leave against acquittal, the court would not have substituted 54 its own  assessment of  the evidence  for that  of the  High Court. But  it is impossible on any hypothesis to accept the conclusion of the High Court. It is difficult in an incident of this  kind to have evidence as strong and clinching as it is before  the Court. The only conclusion which one can come to upon  that evidence  is that  the charge has been brought home to the accused. [57 E-F; 60 B]      (b) The judgment of the High Court is severely laboured and unrealistic. Evidence which is incontrovertible has been rejected on suspicion and surmises. Witnesses who had no axe to grind and had no personal motive to implicate the accused on  a   false  charge   have  been   disbelieved  on  feeble considerations. And  the recovery  of incriminating articles has been  by-passed and  disbelieved by characterising it as unnatural and  incredible. Different  crimes have  different patterns  and   the  offenders   improvise  their   strategy according to the exigencies of the occasion. The prosecution story has  been rejected  as not  fitting in with the common course of  events on  the supposition  and insistence that a crime of  the present  nature had to conform to a pattern of the kind  which the High Court harboured in its mind. [57 F- H]      (i) The  High Court  gave exaggerated importance to the infirmities attaching  to the  ability of  the witnesses  to identify the  respondents and  overlooked the fact that they had been  arrested red-handed  and on the spot. The incident which took  place in  the bank,  the  attempt  made  by  the offenders to  escape and their pursuit by the police and the public, which  had all  been proved  by the  most clear  and cogent evidence,  were  but  links  in  the  same  chain  of causation and  were parts  of one  and the same transaction. [58 A-B & F]      (ii) There  was no  infirmity attaching to the evidence of the  Station House  Officer, Bayana who was examined as a court witness  by  the  High  Court  itself,  regarding  the recovery of  the black  box from  the car and the High Court was not  justified in rejecting his evidence. The submission that the  box could  have been  easily planted by the police after the  respondents were  arrested is wholly unjustified. The box  was not  left in  the car  as  a  matter  of  sweet volition. The  respondents had  no option save to abandon it in the  car when  they were surrounded by the police and the public. What  is natural by the test of common experience is that thieves,  while running  away in  order to  escape from those who  are chasing  them, would  leave a biggish article containing the loot where it lies. [59 D-E]      (iii) The  circumstance that  the number of the car was not mentioned  in the police diary was a petty matter in the midst of  a large  mass  of  good  evidence  connecting  the respondents with the crime. [59 G]

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JUDGMENT:      CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeal No.134 of 1973.      Appeal by  special leave  from the  Judgment and  Order dated the 13th November, 1972 of the Rajasthan High Court in S.P. Criminal Appeal Nos. 580 and 581 of 1972.      B.D. Sharma for the Appellant. 55      D. Mookerjee  and Dr. B.S. Chauhan for Respondents 1 to 4.      R.K.  Garg,   A.K.  Panda  and  Sunil  Kumar  Jain  for Respondents 2 and 3.      The Judgment of the Court was delivered by      CHANDRACHUD, C.J. The respondents were convicted by the learned Sessions  Judge, Bharatpur, under section 395 of the Penal Code  and were  sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for three years.  By its  judgement dated November 13, 1972, the High Court  of Rajasthan has set aside that judgment and has acquitted the  respondents. The State of Rajasthan has filed this appeal  by special  leave against  the judgment  of the High Court.      The State  Bank of  Bikaner and  Jaipur had a branch at Bayana in  the district of Bharatpur. At about 1.30 p.m., on March 17,  1971, seven  or eight  persons looted  the  Bank. Jugal Kishore Paliwal, the Agent of the Bank, was working in his chamber,  while Bhagwan  Dass Goyal,  Head Cashier,  and Suresh Chand  Goyal, Assistant  Cashier, were  in  the  cash cabin at  that  time.  The  decoits,  who  were  armed  with country-made pistols,  knives and  a  hand-grenade,  ordered these Bank  employees to  stand up  and raise  their  hands. Three dacoits  entered the  Agent’s room,  beat him  up  and opened the  safe and  the almirahs.  They could not find any money therein.  They then  took the agent to the cash cabin, where they  tore open  the lid  of an iron cash box and took away currency  notes of  Rs. 15,253 from it. They snatched a black-coloured confidential  box lying  on a  nearby  table, threw away  the papers  which were  in that  box and put the money in  it. They  carried away  the black  box, got into a blue Ambassador car and drove away.      The first  Information Report  of  the  occurrence  was lodged by the Head Cashier, Bhagwan Dass Goyal, within about half an  hour i.e.  at 2.00  p.m., at Police Station Bayana. The Police  Officer there  sent  wireless  messages  to  the surrounding police  stations as  also to police outposts. On receipt of  the message, the Head Constable in charge of the police station at Weir, posted police personnel to block the car on  the road. Soon thereafter, an Ambassador car bearing No. DLJ  7458, in  which seven  persons were seated, arrived from the  direction of  Bayana. Driven  in  panic,  the  car dashed against  an oil  barrel in  front of  a shop  and was damaged. The  occupants of  the  car  were  forced  by  that circumstance to  come out  of the  car, whereupon  they were surrounded by the police and the members of the 56 public. The  occupants fired from their pistols and tried to escape under  cover of  fire but  the police  and the public gave them  a hot  chase for  over a  mile and  succeeded  in surrounding them once again. The occupants of the car opened fire  causing  injuries  to  some  members  of  the  public. Ultimately, they  were over-powered  and caught.  Babu  Lal, Station House  Officer of the Bayana Police Station, arrived on the  scene and  arrested the  respondents. It  transpired during the  investigation that  the Ambassador car which the respondents had  used was stolen from New Delhi a day before the occurrence.  The case  of the  prosecution is  that  the

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respondents before  us were  the very persons who looted the Bank, escaped in the car and were chased and arrested.      The respondents  admitted that  they were arrested near Weir but  they denied  that they had any hand in the loot of the Bank.  Each of them furnished a different explanation as regards his  presence at  Weir at  the time of their arrest. They also  examined four witnesses to show, principally, the reason of their presence at the place of arrest.      It would appear from the judgment of the learned Single Judge of  the High Court of Rajasthan that three points were argued on  behalf  of  the  respondents:  (1)  There  is  no evidence regarding  the identification  of the  respondents; (2) There  is no trustworthy evidence regarding the recovery of the  stolen property from their possession; and (3) There is no  evidence  to  show  that  they  had  escaped  in  the particular Ambassador  car and had come out of the car after it met with an accident.      On the  question of  identification of the respondents, the High Court has rejected the evidence of the Agent of the Bank Jugal  Kishore Paliwal (PW 4), Head Clerk Radhey Charan Bhargava (PW  5), Head  Cashier Bhagwan  Dass Goyal  (PW 6), Agricultural Asst..  Murari Lal  (PW  7),  Daftaries  Radhey Shyam Sharma  (PW 8)  and Amba  Prasad  (PW  9),  and  Asst. Cashier Suresh Goyal (PW 10), on the ground that though some of these  witnesses had  identified the dacoits in the jail, they had  failed to identify them before the trial court. It appears that  these witnesses had wrongly identified some of the accused in the committing court as also before the trial Court. According  to the  High Court  "The only irresistible conclusion which  can be drawn from their statements is that their evidence regarding identification is not convincing." 57      On the question of recovery of the stolen property from the  possession   of  the   respondents  the   case  of  the prosecution is  that each  of the respondents was carrying a bundle of  hundred currency  notes of  Rs. 10  each.  It  is further alleged  that the  black box lying in the Ambassador car was  found to contain currency notes of the value of Rs. 6,800 belonging  to the  Bank. In  addition; live cartridges and knives  are also alleged to have been recovered from the possession of  some of  the respondents.  The High Court has rejected the  whole of  this evidence on the ground that the recovery memos  "cannot be  said to  be  genuine"  and  were prepared subsequently,  that the  knives and live cartridges were not produced before the Court, that the story that each of the  respondents was  carrying currency  notes worth  Rs. 1000, while  running away  is unnatural  and that, it is not likely that the respondents would leave the sum of Rs. 6,800 in the  black box  in the  car and would each carry a sum of Rs.1,000, as if to create evidence against themselves.      On the third question regarding the allegation that the respondents has  escaped in  the Ambassador car and had come out of  that car  after it  met with  an accident,  the High Court has  rejected the  evidence that  the respondents  had fled away  in the  particular car  on the ground that in the entry Exhibit  D-40, in  the General  Diary  of  the  Police Station, relating to the First Information Report the number of the car was not mentioned.      If two  views of the evidence were reasonably possible, we would  not have  substituted our  own assessment  of  the evidence for  that of  the High Court in this appeal against acquittal. But,  we are of the opinion that it is impossible on any hypothesis to accept the conclusion of the High Court that the  prosecution has failed to establish its case. With respect, we  regard  the  judgment  of  the  High  Court  as

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severally  laboured   and  unrealistic.  Evidence  which  is incontrovertible has  been rejected  by the  High  Court  on suspicion and  surmises. Witnesses  who had  no axe to grind and had  no personal  motive to  implicate the  accused on a false   charge,    have   been    disbelieved   on    feeble considerations. And  the recovery  of incriminating articles has been  bypassed and  disbelieved by  characterising it as unnatural and  incredible. Different  crimes have  different patterns  and   the  offenders   improvise  their   strategy according to  the exigencies of the occasion. The High Court has rejected  the prosecution  story as  not fitting in with the  common   course  of   events  on  the  supposition  and insistence that a crime of the present nature had to conform to a  pattern of  the kind which the High Court harboured in its mind. 58      On the  first question,  that is to say the question of identification,  the   High  Court   gave   an   exaggerated importance to  the infirmities  attaching to  the ability of the  witnesses   to  identify   the  respondents.   It   was overlooked, and  when an argument in that behalf was made it was rejected,  that the respondents were arrested red-handed and, in  a manner  of speaking,  on the  spot. There  was no dispute that  the  incident  of  the  kind  alleged  by  the prosecution had taken place in the premises of the Bank. And it requires no strong persuasion to hold that after the Bank was looted,  the offenders, whosoever they may be, would try to escape.  The lodging  of  the  First  Information  Report within half  an hour of the incident, the prompt flashing of the wireless  message to  the  police  stations  and  police outposts in  the vicinity,  the posting  of police guards on the road to stop the car bearing a particular description if it was  detected, the  accident which  the car met with, the emergence from  the car of six or seven persons, the pursuit which the  police and  the public gave them, the shots fired by those persons, the beating given by members of the public to them and the fact that they were ultimately over-powered, caught and arrested, are all matters which are proved by the most clear  and cogent evidence. Respondents are the persons who got  down from the car after it met with an accident and they are  the very  persons who  bear telltale  marks of the rather severe drubbing given by the public. We are unable to understand how, in these circumstances, the High Court could have held  that since  the accused  were not arrested on the spot, the  evidence regarding  their  identity  must  assume importance. The  incident which  took place in the Bank, the attempt made by the offenders to escape and their pursuit by the police  and the  public, are but links in the same chain of  causation.   They  are   parts  of   one  and  the  same transaction.  This,  therefore,  is  a  case  in  which  the offenders were  caught red-handed  near the place of offence while they  were trying  to escape. They fired while fleeing and caused  injuries to  those who  were bravely  trying  to surround them  but eventually, the police and the public got the better  of them. No further question survives but, since the High  Court has  given great  importance to  some  other aspects of the case, we must advert to them.      Equally significant  is the circumstance that an office box (Article  3) containing  Rs. 6,800  was seized  from the Ambassador car from which the respondents came out after the accident. The  Memo of  Seizure  is  at  Exhibit  P-22.  The bundles of currency notes found in the box bore chits in the name of the Bank of Bikaner and 59 Jaipur,  Bayana  Branch.  The  box  also  contained  certain

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documents belonging  to the  Bank, including  a passbook  of Head  Clerk  Radhe  Shyam  Bhargava  (PW  5).  Some  of  the witnesses examined  by the prosecution turned hostile, which only shows what terror a lawless group of dacoits can strike in the  minds of  men. But  the evidence  of Babu  Lal,  the Station House  Officer, Bayana,  who was examined as a Court witness by  the High  Court itself, shows that the black box containing the  money and the other articles was seized from the  Ambassador  car.  The  High  Court  has  rejected  this evidence with  a broad  and unfounded  observation that  the recovery memo  was prepared  subsequently. We  are unable to share that  view. The High Court says that "It is not easily believable that the accused would leave Rs. 6,800 in the box lying in  the car  and each  would run  away with a thousand rupees". The  story that a sum of Rs. 1,000 was found on the person of  each  of  the  respondents  may  or  may  not  be accepted.  But  there  is  no  infirmity  attaching  to  the evidence of Babu Lal regarding the recovery of the black box from the  car. Shri  R.K. Garg, who appears on behalf of the respondents, urged  that the  box  could  have  been  easily planted by  the police  after the respondents were arrested. This submission  is wholly  unjustified. The  box containing the currency  notes, which  were a part of the loot, was not left  in  the  car  as  a  matter  of  sweet  volition.  The respondents had  no option  save to abandon it in the car in which they  were  travelling,  when  the  car  met  with  an accident and  they were  surrounded by  the police  and  the public. What  is natural by the test of common experience is that a  biggish article containing the loot would be left by the thieves where it lies. They would not take it with them, while running  away in  order to escape from the clutches of the people who were chasing them.      The High  Court has  dwelt copiously on the question as to whether the number of the Ambassador car was disclosed in the first  Information Report.  The number of the car may or may not  have been mentioned to the police by Goyal who gave the F.I.R.  But we consider that to be a petty matter in the midst of  a large  mass  of  good  evidence  connecting  the respondents with  the crime.  The fact  that the respondents escaped in  an Ambassador  car is  specifically mentioned in the F.I.R.,  Exhibit P-1.  In fact, the F.I.R. mentions that the Ambassador  car bore  the number  DLJ 7458  but the High Court considered  it as  an interpolation  since, the entry, Exhibit D-40  in the  General Diary  of the  Police  Station relating to  the F.I.R.,  does not mention the number of the car. The  inference drawn  by the High Court that the F.I.R. was prepared later is unsustainable. The entry 60 D-40 is  after all  a summary and summaries are not intended to be exhaustive.  Then they would cease to be summaries.      It is  difficult in  an incident  of this  kind to have evidence as  strong and  clinching as we have before us. The only conclusion  which one can come to upon that evidence is that the  charge has  been  brought  home  to  the  accused. Accordingly, we  allow the appeal, set aside the judgment of the High  Court and restore the order of conviction recorded by the  learned Sessions Judge against the respondents under section 395  of  the  Penal  Code.  The  learned  Judge  had sentenced each  of the  respondents to rigorous imprisonment for three years. The judgment of the High Court is already a decade old.  (We are beholden that we are not yet faced with cases in  their Silver  jubilee year). Respondents have been on  bail   after  undergoing   a  substantial  part  of  the imprisonment. We  understand  that  some  of  them  are  not working as Veterinary doctors or Assistants and have settled

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down as married men with children. Taking these factors into account, we  sentence each  of the  respondents to  rigorous imprisonment for  the period  already undergone by them. We, however, impose upon each one of them a fine of rupees three thousand, which  they shall pay within three months from to- day.  Failing  such  payment,  the  respondents  shall  each undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of six months. H.L.C.                                       Appeal allowed. 61