GOVERNMENT OF BOMBAY Vs. DASHRATH RAMNIVAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the Government of the Province of Bombay against an order of acquittal and discharge passed by Sen J. in a Sessions trial agreeing with the majority verdict of not guilty by the jury. The charge against the accused was that he committed the murder of a Police Constable, Yeshwant Bhikaji, on February 5, 1943, at about 10 p. m. by stabbing him with a knife on Lakshmi Napoo Road at Matunga in Bombay. The prosecution relied upon the evidence of two alleged eye-witnesses, one person having seen the accused running away with a knife in his hand soon after the offence was alleged to have been committed, the accused having washed his blood-stained hands on the same night in the room of witness Ambikabai and having concealed the knife in the compound of the Cutchi Visha Hall situated in Laxmi Narayan Lane which the accused was alleged to have entered after committing the offence. The prosecution also relied upon a statement of an incriminating nature made by the accused before the Coroner on March 19, 1943, when he held inquest proceedings over the body of the deceased.

(2.) THE defence was that the accused had] not committed the alleged offence, that the eye-witnesses were on inimical terms with him and were telling a false story as they were members of a gambling den and a ganja club which were carried on in the hut of one Mulji, that Ambikabai was induced by the Police to make an incriminating statement against the accused under a promise that her husband, who was in Police custody, would be released if she made the statement, that he had not concealed any knife in the compound of the Cutchi Visha Hall;, that the accused was taken before the Chief Presidency Magistrate on February 27 and 28, 1943, but he had not made any statement before the learned Magistrate, and that the accused was harassed and tortured by the Criminal Investigation Department Police to make the alleged incriminating statement before the Coroner.

(3.) AS regards the nature of the statement the learned Judge also told the jury that although the Coroner was not strictly speaking bound to comply with all the formalities which this Court has laid down for Magistrates while recording confessions under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, he ought to have observed those formalities because it is expressly enacted in Section 19 of the Coroners Act that for the purposes of Section 26 of the Indian Evidence Act a Coroner shall be deemed to be a Magistrate. With this observation the learned Judge left it to the jury to decide whether in their opinion the confession was made voluntarily.