KAMALASHANKER BHULESHANKER DAVE Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In support of its case against accused No. 1, the prosecution led the evidence of Mr. J. C. Trivedi, Inquiry Officer; and the prosecution relied upon the two statements made by accused No. 1 before Mr. Trivedi. The first statement was made on February 9, 1952 and that statement is Ex. 43 on the record. The other statement was made on February 22, 1958 and that statement is Ex. 42 on the record. According to the prosecution, Ex. 42 contained certain statements of self- inculpatory nature and amounted to a confession on the part of accused No. 1. It was urged before us that Ex. 42 was made by accused No. 1 in the course of the inquiry conducted by Mr. J. C. Trivedi when the evidence was recorded on oath and. therefore, this statement, Ex. 42, was hit by the provisions of Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India. We will first deal with the legal aspect of this matter before considering the contents of Ex. 42. As is well known, Article 20(3) provides against testimonial compulsion and lays down that no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. It was urged before us that looking to the nature of the inquiry before Mr. J. C. Trivedi, there was a compulsion on accused No. 1 to make that statement before Mr. J. C. Trivedi and, therefore, we cannot take the contents of Ex. 42 into consideration as that document was the result of some thing which was done contrary to the provisions of Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India.

(2.) In order to appreciate this argument, it is necessary to bear in mind that the inquiry before Mr. Trivedi was under Section 43(1) of the Bombay Co-operative Societies Act, 1925. That section provides as follows:

(3.) What is meant by testimonial compulsion in Article 20(3) of the Constitution has now been settled by an authoritative pronouncement of the Supreme Court in the case of State of Bombay v. Kathi Kalu, AIR 1961 SC 1808. There a Bench of 11 Judges of the Supreme Court considered the scope of Article 20(3) in all its various aspects and the majority judgment was delivered by Sinha. C. S. on behalf of himself, Imam, Gajendragadkar, Subba Rao, Wanchoo, Raghubar Dayal, Rajagopala Ayyangar and Mudholkar, JJ.; whereas the minority judgment was delivered by Das Gupta, J. on behalf of himself, S. K. Das and A. K. Sarkar, JJ. At page 1816 in para 16, after considering the various authorities the majority judgment laid down certain conclusions seriatim and in conclusion No. (7) it was laid down as follows: