STATE OF BOMBAY Vs. SARDAR SARDUL SINGH KIRPALSINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) [His Lordship after setting out the prosecution case and the various defences taken by the accused, proceeded :] As the convictions of accused Nos. 2 and 5 were based upon the acceptance of the unanimous verdict of the jury and as the convictions of accused No. 1 and accused No. 4 were based upon the acceptance of the majority verdict of 8 against 1 and 6 against 3 respectively, it would not be open to this Court to go behind the verdict unless the appellants learned advocate Mr. Chari was able to satisfy us that the learned Judge s charge to the jury suffered from misdirections or nondirections amounting to misdirections. In this connection, the first submission which Mr. Chari strenuously pressed before us was that a considerable bulk of evidence relating to the conduct of Lala Shankarlal after the conspiracy was carried out was wholly inadmissible and yet it was allowed to be led. Mr. Chari did not dispute the legal position that the evidence of Lala Shankarlal s conduct during the course of the conspiracy was admissible against the accused, but he contended that the evidence regarding the words spoken, acts done, letters written, cheques drawn, transfers of shares made and several other things done by Lala Shankarlal after the object of the conspiracy was achieved was not admissible against the accused. According to Mr. Chari, whatever negotiations Lala Shankarlal might have carried on in the year 1950 for purchasing the controlling block of shares of the Empire of India Life Assurance Company or whatever his conduct might have been in the matter of the repayments of what are known in this case as the Raghavji loan, the Misridevi loan and the so-called " fresh loan " to accused No. 5 and in the matter of the purchase and sale of the Tropical Insurance Company s shares by the Jupiter General Insurance Company, all that could be no legal evidence agianst the accused. Mr. Chari took us through the various paragraphs of the learned Judge s charge to the jury, wherein the learned Judge extensively dealt with the evidence about what Lala Shankarlal had done or said after January 31, 1949 (the period specified in the charges against the accused did not extend beyond January 31, 1949), and contended that all that evidence being inadmissible against the accused, the charge to the jury was vitiated as the mind of the jury was prejudiced by the consideration of what the jury was not entitled under the law to know and cousider.

(2.) Having thus formulated his first objection to the learned Judge s charge to the jury, Mr. Chari proceeded to invite our attention to the several paragraphs in the learned Judge s charge where the learned Judge referred to the evidence regarding the conduct of Lala Shankarlal after the object of the conspiracy was achieved, i.e. after the amount of Rs. 23,15,650 alleged to have come out of the funds of the Jupiter Company was paid on January 20, 1949, to Tulsiprasad Khaitan for purchasing the controlling block of shares of the Jupiter General Insurance Company. Mr. Chari invited our attention to several observations made by the learned Judge in his charge to the jury...

(3.) [His Lordship after setting out these observations, proceeded:]