KISTA PILLAI Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners in these two revision cases were respectively the second and the third in C. 0. No. 42 of 1946 on the file of the Additional First Class Magistrate, chingleput. It is unnecessary for the purpose of these cases to refer at any length to the details of the convictions and the sentences. I have listened to a long argument on behalf of the petitioners but the only point that need be dealt with is the one as to jurisdiction.

(2.) IT has been found by both the lower Courts that the two petitioners were members of an unlawful assembly which pelted stones at the Indo-Ceylon Express on 26-2-1946 and that the assembly continued from about 8 a. m. till about 10 a. m. As to what happened at about 8 A. M. there is no dispute that the occur, renee was on the Saidapet side and therefore within the local limits of the jurisdiction of the Additional First Class Magistrate, Chingleput. The case for the prosecution was that at about 10 a. m. stones were thrown from the City side towards the Saidapet side of the railway line. It )B in regard to this latter part of the occur- rence that the point as to jurisdiction is raised. It is said that the Additional First Class Magistrate, Chingleput had no jurisdiction to deal with what was alleged to have happened at about 10 a. m, and that the Magistrates' Courts in the city could alone have dealt with it. There is a concurrent finding by both the Courts below that there were not two separate offences but it was a continuous offence throughout the whole time. The crowd which had assembled at about 8 a. m. and which did considerable damage by way of injury to persons and damage to properties temporarily dispersed when there was shooting by the police but they formed immediately thereafter into smaller groups and continued to be on the spot till about 10 a. m. when the train started and there was again pelting of stones at the train. Mr. Rajagopalan, advocate for the petitioners, has invited me to say that they were two totally unconnected transactions but having gone through the material evidence and the findings of the Courts below, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that the Courts below have arrived at the correct conclusion. Both the occurrences, if they may be be described, are really parts of one continuous rioting and there can be no doubt that the third clause of Section 182, Criminal P. C, will apply. It runs as follows:. . . Where an offence is a continuing one, and continues to be committed in more local areas than one,. . . it may be inquired into or tried by a Court having jurisdiction over any of snob local areas. The offence of rioting is a continuing one. There is, therefore, no absence of jurisdiction in the Additional First Class Magistrate, Chingleput. The learned Counsel for the petitioners has also been unable to point out how, assuming that there was an absence of jurisdiction in the trying Magistrate, that error has occasioned a failure of justice.

(3.) MR. Rajagopalan attempted to argue several other points which in my opinion are concluded by the concurrent findings of the Courts below. I am not only not persuaded that those findings are perverse bat I consider that they are reasonable" and proper conclusions to arrive at on the evidence on record.