BUDHOO Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Applicant was convicted Under Section 353 of the IPC and sentenced to six months' rigorous imprisonment thereunder. He went up in appeal which was dismissed by the II Temporary Sessions Judge, Allahabad and hence this application in revision in this Court.

(2.) THE present Applicant Buddhu and one other person, Prem, were suspected by constable Udairaj Singh (PW 3) of bringing illicit liquor in two tins in a boat from the other side of the river at Allahabad. Constable Udairaj Singh had gone to Lohaghat for serving a summons and finding a kirtan going on at Mankameshwar Ghat sat down there and it was at that place that he received information about two persons bringing illicit liquor. He tried to apprehend the two persons as they were coming out of the boat. One of the tins was thrown away in the river and the other was attempted to be emptied, but was caught hold of by the constable. The two persons finding their attempt frustrated got infuriated and gave the constable a beating with kicks and fists and even tore his uniform. The two persons could not consequently be arrested by him. He lodged a report at the police station together with the tin which contained about two bottles of liquor. An investigation followed, whereafter the two persons Prem and Buddhu were prosecuted and convicted as aforesaid.

(3.) ONE of the points, therefore, which was raised before the courts below and also before me is that the two persons should have been put up for identification by constable Udairaj Singh. The Sessions Judge has referred to a case reported in Ramnath v. State, 1965 AWR 811 in which it has been held that if the evidence furnished in court by a witness is of a character on which implicit reliance can be placed, the presence of corroborative evidence in the shape of identification memo is wholly immaterial. There is no provision in the Code of Criminal Procedure for a suspect being put to identification first before he is prosecuted or asked to stand his trial in a court for having committed a certain offence where he is not named in the first information report. The identification proceedings are, however, taken up by the investigating agency so that the identification of the suspect at the time of identification proceedings may lend support to what they depose in court about the complicity of a particular person in a certain crime. But even when a person is put up for identification proceedings before he is prosecuted for a certain offence, the evidence which can be relied upon against him for his conviction is the evidence which is given in court and as has been observed in Ramnath v. State (supra), the earlier identification of the accused merely corroborates the evidence which is given in court. A witness will, therefore, not be treated unreliable or his evidence discarded merely because the accused in a particular case was not put up for identification. All what would happen in such a case would be that the evidence which in the case of earlier identification proceedings would be available for corroboration of the evidence given in court will not be available and if that corroborative evidence is not available the courts will examine the evidence a little more closely so as to find out whether that evidence can be relied upon even without the aforesaid corroboration.