BABULAL Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This application in revision has been filed by Babu Lal and Madhusudan, who were charged and tried for an offence punishable under Section 435, Penal Code, by a Magistrate of the first class of Mohamdi, in Kheri district. The learned Magistrate found them guilty, convicted them of the offence with which they were charged and sentenced each of them to rigorous imprisonment for one year and to a fine of Rs. 100.

(2.) The case for the prosecution was as follows: On the night between 17th and 18th March 1950, at about 10 p.m., the applicant Madbusudan went to Dal Chand alias Dalla a tongawala, and asked him to get ready his tonga as he had Babulal and Anr. vs. State (21.05.1951 -ALLHC) Page 2 of 5 (21.05.1951 -ALLHC) Page 2 of 5 to go somewhere. Dalla refused saying that his horse was tired and he himself was unwell. This is said to have annoyed Madhusudan, who threatened Dalla to see him and break his limbs. Dalla and his wife, Shanti, went to sleep in their house. Dalla's horse was, as usual, tethered in a double-thatched shed (bangla) near his house. About a couple of hours later Dalchand and his wife heard the noise of their horse jumping in the head. As they came out of their house they noticed the applicants near the shed. Madhusudan was sprinkling kerosene oil over the shed and Babu Lal lighted a match and set fire to the shed, which was burnt and the horse was badly burnt. Dalla raised an alarm and the people arrived on the scene, whereupon the applicants fled away.

(3.) The applicants denied all the allegations-made on behalf of the prosecution and alleged that they had been falsely implicated due to enmity. It was suggested that Shanti, the wife of Dalla, was a woman of loose character and Babu Lal often cut jokes with her; that Dalla suspected illicit intimacy between his wife and Babu Lal, and that on account of that suspicion he had been falsely implicated in this affair. Madhusudan alleged that he had allowed Dalla's wife to use the latrine in his house and since the time when he prevented her from using the latrine, there arose some dispute, on that account and that on account of that dispute he had been falsely implicated.