ABRAMAYI Vs. JOSEPH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) On 6-11-1958 the accused in this case executed a document (a certified copy of which is Ext. P 5) purporting to be a lease deed in favour of the Jewish Synagogue of Ernakulam. In this document he said that he had applied to the Synagogue for permission to put up a workshop on some land belonging to the Synagogue, that on 19-10-1958 the Synagogue had granted him the necessary permission and had agreed to lease him the property for the purpose, and that he was executing the document in pursuance of that agreement. The accused himself presented the document for registration, and it was registered on 11-11-1958. Then, on 26-11-1958, the accused applied by Ext. P. 2 to the Executive Authority of the Ernakulam Municipality for permission to construct a workshop on the land in question; and, although no provision of law is referred to in the application, it is clear that the application was under S.195 of the Cochin Municipal Act (XVIII of 1113). The application was rejected on the score that the land being a burial ground was not suitable for the purpose, and it would appear from Ext. P. 4 that the Synagogue objected to the grant of permission on the ground that the lease deed was a false document and that it had never given the accused permission to build-on its land. On 19-12-1958 the Manager of the Synagogue lodged a complaint against the accused with the District Magistrate, Ernakulam, for an offence punishable under the second part of S.193 of the Indian Penal Code. (The section actually mentioned in the complaint was, however, the definition section. S.192). The learned Magistrate discharged the accused under S.253(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code holding that the proceeding before the Executive Authority being neither a judicial nor a quasi judicial proceeding, the making of the document in question did not amount to the fabrication of false evidence as defined by S.192, I. P. C. The complainant went in revision to the Sessions Court, Ernakulam and the learned Sessions Judge having dismissed the petition, taking the same view of the case as the District Magistrate, the complainant has come up here.

(2.) S.192, I. P. C. runs as follows:

(3.) I am told that since the section, in terms, contemplates an authority who is to form an opinion on the evidence, it necessarily implies that he must be exercising a judicial or a quasi judicial function. I am afraid that this is too wide a view to take of what is judicial in nature. A public servant, acting as such, in a purely ministerial capacity, indeed, even a private person, has often to form an opinion upon the evidence before him, and I would certainly not go so far as to deny to public servants exercising a purely executive function, the capacity to form an opinion upon evidence. Indeed if that were the sole test, I would say that the proceeding we are now considering, a proceeding in which, on the facts ascertained by him, the Executive Authority has to decide whether he should give or withold permission, (in other words whether any of the grounds for rejection mentioned in S.201 of the Cochin Municipal Act exisi), is a quasi judicial proceeding. In re Mir Ekrar Ali (ILR VI Calcutta 482), In re Juggun Lall (VII Calcutta Law Reports 356) and Mohesh Chandra v. Emperor (AIR 1918 Calcutta 61) furnish instances where the offence was found to have been committed though the proceedings were purely ministerial, and the second of these cases lays down, what indeed is apparent from the wording of S.192 and 193, I. P. C., that the proceeding need not be judicial.