AJINATH SAHEBRAO HORE Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner before me was convicted by the trial Court of offence under section 66(1)(b) of the Bombay Prohibition Act on the ground that he was found to be in possession of 50 gms. of Ganja at the time when he was accosted by the Police. The Police led enough evidence to prove the possession of the said quantity of Ganja with the accused.

(2.) In defence, all that the accused came out was that he did not have in his possession the said quantity of Ganja. It was not at all his case, either in the case of cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses or during his examination under section 313 of the Code, that the said quantity of Ganja was planted upon him by any of the Police Officers who accosted him and conducted the search. The trial Court found that the offence committed by the petitioner was fully proved by sufficient evidence. Hence, he was convicted of the above mentioned offence and was sentenced to suffer rigorous imprisonment for one month and to pay a fine of Rs. 100/- and in default to suffer simple imprisonment for 15 days.

(3.) In the revision application filed against the said order of conviction and sentence, the main argument advanced for the first time in the Sessions Court (which was the only argument re-agitated before me) was that at the time when the petitioner was accosted and searched, the officer who took the search did not call upon the accused to search himself, to satisfy himself (the accused) that the officer taking search was not having any such contraband article with him at the time of the search. Reliance was placed in this connection on the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of (State of Bihar v. Kapil Singh) A.I.R. 1969 Supreme Court P. 53. That was a case, where the Supreme Court was required to consider whether the Inspector of Police had observed all the formalities required to be observed when searching the house of appellant Deo Singh and while holding that the evidence against the accused was grossly insufficient to bring home conviction against him, the Supreme Court observed as follows :